


The Bridge

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Flashbacks, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-22 10:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: Dan and Lovett fall in love in 2005.  It takes them sixteen years and three cities to get their shit together.





	1. Part I: 2005 & 2021

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from this Nayyirah Waheed quote: 
> 
> “Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”

_August 2021_

Lovett twists the microphone cable around his feet, looking down to make sure he doesn’t step on it. His doctor’s been on him, recently, about this strange pain in his lower back and he doesn’t think a nervous, stage-related mishap would go over well. She’d definitely double down on her yoga threat at least, and, as much of a WeHo cliché as he still is, yoga is one stereotype he’s failed at over and over again.

“Well,” he says, when the applause dies down. “That was quite the ovation. I’ve been away too long, huh?”

There are a few boos and yells that he cannot - or chooses not to be able to, for the sake of his fraying ego - decipher.

“I know, I know. None of you respect the creative’s need for a break.” Lovett sighs, dramatically. As if he’s taken the last four weeks off LOLI to traipse around Venice on a gondola, sipping a bright, fruity chardonnay and eating finger cheese. As if he hadn’t spent those weeks working double time on PSA, while Tommy and Hanna took Logan to visit his grandparents out east and then Jon and Emily took their Southeast Asia babymoon.

Lovett doesn’t remember babymoons being a thing, back when he’d thought, even distantly, that babies were - maybe, possibly, probably not, but Lovett’s always been in the habit of preparing for even the most improbable of possibilities - in his future. 

Lovett shakes his head. He’s already done the babymoon rant, on the one overlapping Thursday pod when it had been just him and a reluctant Priyanka and he’d used the opportunity to appropriate the rant wheel into the end of the pod. It had been all fun and games, until Jon had sent him a bottle of truly terrible table wine all the way from his phone in Cambodia.

It was their most downloaded episode in a while. Lovett had paid Jon back with a photo of their iTunes numbers and a depressed-looking Leo.

“You know,” Lovett says, instead, trying to maintain the thread of the bit. He’s tired. God, he’s tired. “Experts say that the best way to get your creative juices flowing is not actually to work yourself into an early grave.” He drops his voice, in a terrible imitation of his father. “‘The Jewish work ethic, it’s in the Lovett family genes.’ The Lovett work ethic, as far as I could tell, was to work from dawn to dusk to make enough money to force your kids into little league or volleyball or whatever terrible fucking all American sport is in vogue. And, if you’re extra lucky, you might have a few, delirious Sunday morning bagels smothered in cream cheese before you die.”

He levels the crowd with a glare. “What kind of life is that? Not one I want. So, I’m sorry if I took a little break, to, you know, get the juices flowing.”

There’s a low murmur. Lovett’s losing them. Lovett’s been losing them more and more, lately, a phenomenon he figures is statistically correlated to his exhaustion.

“You know what else experts don’t suggest to get creative juices flowing?” He tries to bring it back around. “Endlessly scrolling through your Twitter feed.”

That earns him an easy rush of laughter that ripples through the Improv.

“Unlike my Pod Save America cohosts,” Lovett continues, because if he’s going to get laughs tonight, apparently it’s only going to be through the lowest hanging fruit. “Jon and Tommy and-” Lovett trips over Dan’s name, just barely, after _six months_ , remembering to jump over it. “They seem to think, after all these years, that Twitter really is going to save America from this dystopian nightmare we have built for ourselves. The definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

There’s laughter, but it’s patchy. A group of older men in the right corner, sharing a tray of nachos and a pitcher of Bud Light, not a phone in sight as they belly-laugh. A gaggle of Turner interns - he recognizes them, vaguely, as the group Spencer had roped him into speaking to a few weeks ago and who had begged him for ticket vouchers - who are sipping margaritas, laughing at everything he says without once looking up from their phones.

This is definitely not his best work.

“Okay, well, let’s start the show,” he says, twisting the cable around his hands and deciding to take pity on the crowd and him both. “Thank you to my esteemed panel of guests, who agreed to be here on a Thursday evening when, at the very last minute, I realized I, ahh, have to be in Chicago tomorrow night.” By _I realized_ he means their new tour planner Julian, who had thrown a fit on Monday when he looked at Lovett’s schedule. Julian had been much less gracious about it than their guests had been. Lovett figures he’d deserved it though. “To inaugurate the Obama Library. Can you imagine it’s been five years already?”

Lovett shakes his head. “Five years since Obama was our knight in shining armor and we had some respect for the office of the presidency. I figure that’s a worthy cause, worthy enough to warrant a last-minute schedule change, don’t you?”

A few titters.

“Anyway,” he nods at Travis in the wings. “Please welcome the best panel of guests in show business.”

The crowd claps appreciatively and, at least, has better manners than he does where his guests are concerned. They all make it through the rest of the show unscathed. Mostly, at least. The game participant - Lovett’s pretty sure it was Violet, although, honestly, it could have been Vivian, or Viola? Do people name their children after the instrument? Viola Davis’ parents did, so he figures, maybe - was a little worse for wear, but she got a Parachute gift card, anyway, and Lovett did shake her hand when she came up after the show.

When Lovett gets home, he eats the entirety of the 20-piece chicken nugget box he’d grabbed on the drive, then crawls into his side of the bed. Pundit, Leo, and Lucca all curl up on the other side. In the morning, he’ll drop them off at Andy’s on his way to the airport but, for now, he’s grateful that he’d insisted on keeping them tonight.

Lucca spreads over his feet and Leo curls onto the empty pillow next to him. Lovett buries his head in Pundit’s curls and tries not to think about the weekend of celebrations ahead when the last thing he feels like doing is celebrating.

He’s still so tired.

Pundit whuffles into his neck. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift into a fitful sleep.

***

_Summer 2005_

Lovett's frowning down at Senator Clinton's next tax policy speech, muttering the words under his breath, when he, quite literally, runs into something solid and equally harried.

"Shit," the something says, reaching for his Blackberry as it tumbles out of his hand. It slips through his fingers and skitters to the stone Capitol steps with a crack.

"That would have been impressive," Lovett tells him, as he squats down to gather the scattered pages of his speech. "If you'd managed to catch it."

"Story of my life," he says, bending to rescue his badly cracked Blackberry. "Never nearly as coordinated as I want to be."

"Good thing coordination isn't important for," Lovett pauses to take in the too-wide tie and the too-loose suit jacket, and guesses, "politics."

He laughs and holds out his free hand. It's his left and he has to twist it a little awkwardly to meet Lovett's. "Dan Pfeiffer. Communications director for Senator Bayh."

Lovett snaps his fingers. " _Yes_. I knew I recognized you. Jon Lovett, speechwriter for Senator Clinton."

Dan tilts his head, a frown in the center of his forehead. He looks tired, with deep circles under his eyes, but everyone on the Hill looks tired. "I'm sorry, I'm sure I've seen you around but-" He shrugs, apologetically.

"I've got a forgettable face," Lovett jokes, wincing inwardly as Dan's face falls. He exudes earnestness. He also has the most striking blue eyes Lovett has ever seen. "Or so my mother says."

"I wouldn't say that," Dan says, then flushes. His phone chirps and shakes in his hand and he looks down at the battered screen. He sighs. "This is a goner. I've gotta-"

"Yeah," Lovett nods and then, because he's never quite learned self-preservation, "I, ahh owe you a drink for destroying your Blackberry. It's clearly very important to you."

Dan's mouth twists into a rueful smile. "I'm a very important person."

"Even VIPs need to drink." Lovett shrugs, like his heart isn't beating wildly in his ears. "9 o'clock? The Lobby Bar?"

Dan pauses and Lovett can read his every emotion across his face before he slams it shut.

"Only if you-" Lovett says, quickly, taking a step back. Of all the dumb things he does on an everyday basis, this has to top the week's list. He had been joking, but Lovett _has_ heard Dan's name around. He's a rising star in the Democratic Party, and people hoping to go somewhere in the Party don't out themselves on the steps of the damn Capitol building. Good thing Lovett doesn't value his future in politics or anything. "You're a busy guy, forget I asked. Take this get out of jail free card as my apology for your phone."

Dan's face twists again, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. "Make it the Hyatt," he says, and then he's gone, jogging up the steps.

Lovett watches him go, his heart fluttering in his chest.

***

_August 2021_

Lovett is delayed out of LAX due to, as far as Lovett can tell, an extreme humidity front over the Midwest that’s screaming at Lovett to turn back around, rescue the dogs from Andy and Molly’s pool-less backyard, and curl up for the rest of the weekend with the latest Michael Schur hospital-based sitcom.

He’d miss the weekend. POTUS has already been Tweeting professional photos of the gorgeous glass windows and manicured laws of the Presidential Library and Lovett would be sorry to miss that. He’d be even sorrier to miss the family reunion already unfolding across Instagram - Logan throwing mashed potatoes at Emily’s camera lens, Jon caught mid-snort with gin on his nose, Cody more relaxed than Lovett has seen him in months with a bright pick coronation stuck in his hair - as Lovett taxis to the gate and then the thankfully short distance from Midway to the 52nd Street Hyatt.

He would not miss the shock of turning from the check-in desk, key in hand and with every intention of at least changing into a less sweaty _FotP_ shirt, and running straight into Dan.

His suitcase handle slides out of his hand and clatters to the floor.

“Sorry.” Dan smiles, a small, half thing that twitches at the edge of his mouth. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Why, Mr. Pfeiffer,” Lovett bats his eyelashes and tries to forget that he’s sweating through his scalp, “were you watching for me at the window?”

“Always,” Dan jokes, squatting down to right Lovett’s suitcase. His thighs strain in his powder blue khaki shorts and Lovett gets a momentary glimpse of the way his back pulls under one of the hundred _Trust the Process_ t-shirts Lovett’s seen him wear over the course of their … whatever inevitably inadequate adjective Lovett can think to put to what they’ve had over the course of the sixteen years since he literally ran into Dan on the Capitol steps.

Lovett twists his fingers, reaching out to take his suitcase back but not quite calculating for their brush of fingers. “Sorry I was late. My flight was delayed for no other reason than that Chicago is terrible.”

Dan’s face twists, something Lovett can almost - definitely used to be able to - read flitting across Dan’s forehead before he settles his features. “That’s no way to talk about the Midwest. We’re going to need this coalition in 2024.”

“Fuck,” Lovett rubs at his forehead with his fingers. “Just the thought- even my kidney stones have kidney stones.”

Dan laughs. “Come now, I know you better than that. Let me see the bracket.”

Lovett frowns, tries, “I don’t have one,” but Dan puts one hand on his hip and wiggles his fingers with the other. Lovett sighs and unlocks his phone, opening the Google doc he’s been working on, secretly, for months.

Dan frowns at it for a long time, zooming in and out with his fingers. The hair on the back of his bent neck is greyer than it was just six months ago.

“Well?” Lovett asks, finally. “Comments from the peanut gallery?”

Dan hands Lovett’s phone back. He shrugs, exaggeratedly. “No peanut galleries here. I’m out of the prediction business, remember?”

Despite himself, Lovett laughs, a spontaneous, full-bellied laugh like he hasn’t laughed in so long. “You’re such an asshole,” he gets out, between breaths.

“It wasn’t _that_ funny,” Dan frowns. “And it feels an awful lot like you’re laughing more at me than with me.”

“Always,” Lovett promises. “Always.”

Dan shakes his head. “Not one bone in my body has missed you.”

“I know,” Lovett lies, because two can play at this game. Two have always played at this game.

“Really, though,” Dan says, slowly, much more seriously than the return to the bit deserves, “Chicago isn’t such a bad place to spend some time.”

Lovett shrugs, that old 2008 wound, only ever just scabbed over, flaking open. “I wouldn’t actually know.” He twists his fingers around his suitcase handle, trying to push past the pounding in his chest and behind his eyes and in his lower back.

Dan’s smiling, too soft, too sincere, too everything that has gotten them into trouble over and over again but never back out of it, and Lovett sends up a thank you to all the gods he doesn’t quite believe in when his stomach ruins the moment.

Dan chuckles, the tightness in his shoulders softening. “The kitchen’s already closed, but we saved you some things from dinner.”

“You’re a godsend,” Lovett sighs, meaning it this time. “Lead the way.”

Dan makes an aborted motion, like maybe, ridiculously, he was going to reach for Lovett’s suitcase. He settles on shoving his hands into his shorts and leading the way into the bar.

As they enter, a cheer goes up from the table and Lovett’s eminently grateful that the room’s empty except for the Obama cohort. Lovett smirks, “how much have you all had?”

Jon pushes his chair back, “you have some catching up to do. Let me get you something.”

Lovett frowns at him. “I can get it.”

“Nah, sit down, long flight, all that,” Jon says, without missing a beat or actually meeting Lovett’s eyes. Like he’s been doing for weeks, now. Like he’s practicing for the baby on Lovett. Like he’s- Lovett’s too tired for this. He’s nodding before Jon actually finishes asking, “gin and tonic?”

Dan chuckles and Lovett reaches for “Dan said one of you monsters saved me some food?”

At the end of the table, Emily freezes, a chicken wing picked mostly to its bones in her fingers. There’s a large styrofoam box perched on the table in front of her, where Lovett’s so used to seeing a martini. “Ahh,” she says, slowly. “We did, but then the baby got hungry?”

Lovett laughs. “That excuse is only going to work for so much longer, but for now I guess you get a free pass.”

She blows him a BBQ kiss that he pretends to pocket.

“There’s a pizza place a couple blocks west. Should still be open at this hour,” Cody suggests, patting his stomach, then corrects. “I’m lying. I know it’s open at this hour. I’ve made midnight runs there many, many times.”

Dan chuckles. “I’m in. Who doesn’t want pizza after a steak dinner?”

“No sane person,” Tommy agrees.

“What are we talking about?” Jon asks, appearing at Lovett’s elbow with a drink. 

“Pizza,” Lovett says, as he takes it. There’s a slice of cucumber floating on the top and Lovett wonders if he could get away with just eating that or, maybe, asking the bartender if he could have the rest of the cucumber it came from. “Because your wife ate my dinner.”

Jon chuckles. “That was inevitable.”

“Yeah,” Lovett agrees. He takes a sip. It’s strong.

“I’m in for pizza, though,” Jon shrugs.

Lovett downs the drink in one sip, and drops it onto the edge of the table. When in Chicago, he figures.

***

_December 2006_

Lovett looks up as the lock clicks open. "Hey," he calls from the couch, where he's sitting cross-legged in a pair of loose, worn sweatpants. "Welcome home, honey. Would you like me to fix you a whiskey sour? I got some fresh eggs from the store."

The quip dies halfway off his tongue as Dan enters. He's lost his jacket and his sleeves are rolled halfway up his elbows. The dark circles that Lovett has come to think of as definitively Dan's are deeper and darker and redder. His hair is wild around his ears, where he likes to run his fingers through it.

Lovett closes his laptop over the speech he was working on. "Do you actually want a drink? You look terrible."

Dan drops his messenger bag next to the couch and drops into the armchair. "Bayh isn't running."

"Shit." Lovett flinches, pulling his knees up and into his chest. "Shit, Dan, I'm sorry-"

"I should have seen it coming." Dan rubs at his eyes with the pads of his fingers. "The moment he said he needed to ‘take the holidays to think it over.’”

Lovett drops his chin to the tops of his knees. “He get a visit from the ghost of Christmas future?”

Dan doesn’t even grace him with a half laugh or a withering look. “Official line is his wife doesn’t want to put the family through it, but-”

Lovett sighs, “yeah.” He’s seen the same headlines everyone else has - _If you want to elect a Buick, nominate Senator Bayh, if you want to elect a BMW, nominate literally anyone else in the Democratic Party_ \- and there’s only so much even a communications director as talented as Dan can do with a reputation that sits squarely between ‘dependable’ and ‘dull’ when the country is looking for change and excitement.

Lovett worries about it, sometimes, even where Hillary’s concerned.

Dan squeezes the bridge of his nose and Lovett lets his knees fall to the couch again. “Are you going back to the Senate office? At least then you’d be in Washington when I-”

Dan flinches and cuts him off, leaning forward on his knees and still not able to look at Lovett. “I got a call. From David Plouffe.[1] [LO2] [LO3] He’s running Senator Obama’s exploratory committee. They’re looking to expand their communications personnel.”

"Oh." Lovett's ears are ringing with the sound of Dan slamming the door of their lives shut. "He's running his campaign out of Chicago, isn't he?"

"Yeah." Dan sighs. He doesn’t look at Lovett. “I’m on the first flight out in the morning.”

"Okay."

Dan straightens and lets his head fall back. He rolls his neck against the back of the chair. "You've been spending half your weeks in New York, anyway."

"Yeah, but-" Lovett bites his lip. He looks around the room. There's a menorah in the window, one of the electronic kinds, next to Dan's small Christmas tree with its browning pine needles. Lovett's _Serious Guide to Joke Writing_ is resting atop the history of ESPN that Dan's been reading on the rare occasions he has a free moment. Lovett has to wrack his memory for the last time he slept at his own apartment and he’s been couch surfing in New York because- Because DC is home. Because he’d thought this apartment was becoming home.

"And you'll be heading to New Hampshire soon," Dan continues, like his head's already in Chicago, like this life they've been slowly building together doesn't hold a candle to the road of a campaign.

Lovett nods. Senator Clinton had told him right before Christmas. February 1st. Lovett had just thought- well, he'd thought he still had a few weeks to figure out how to broach the subject. "New Hampshire is temporary.”

Dan looks away. "After New Hampshire, it’s South Carolina. Then California and Ohio and Nevada.”

Lovett bites his lip. A series of DCCC-mandated hotel rooms stretch across his future, but he’d always thought DC was the emerald city at the end of that yellow brick road.

“It was going to be the same if I was working for Bayh,” Dan pushes.

“Chicago is not the same,” Lovett pushes back.

“Lovett-”

“I know,” Lovett says, quickly, before Dan can offer whatever condescending reminder of how closeted he is that he’s come up with this time. “Just-” Lovett takes a breath and asks, even though he knows the answer, “did you even think to talk to me about it before you took the interview?"

Dan looks away. "I'm talking to you about it now."

"And were you planning on talking to me about it before you took the job?" Lovett keeps pushing, because he's never known when to stop and he’s never known when to leave without burning the entire house down behind him.

"I may not even get the job," Dan insists, quickly. Then, quietly "no."

"Yeah." Lovett uncurls his legs and stands. "Yeah, okay."

"Jon." Dan reaches for his wrist, wraps his fingers around Lovett's pressure point and soothes him with his thumb. "If I don't do this, my political career may be over."

_If you do this, our relationship will almost definitely be over_. Lovett swallows. "I know. I'm proud of you. This is- this is what you've always wanted."

Dan nods. His thumb is warm on Lovett's wrist for so long that Lovett lets himself hope, maybe, that this isn't it.

Then Dan lets him go.

"I'm just gonna-" Lovett grabs his laptop and his book from the coffee table. "Good luck in Chicago."

Dan watches him, his eyes are the darkest blue, sad and resigned, like this is exactly how he expected this night to go.

He doesn't ask Lovett to stay.

***

_August 2021_

“Come on.” Alyssa snaps her fingers as she places her phone face down in the middle of the table. “Food's here, no phones.”

“Eating with you is like eating with my two year old,” Tommy grumbles, but he follows suit.

Cody shrugs and trades his phone for a slice of pizza. Lovett picks at the edge of his screen protector until Dan and Jon both wither under Alyssa's glare, but then he follows suit, placing his nude phone over Jon's.

The pile buzzes the moment Lovett sits back on his heels.

“Probably a Twitter alert,” Jon shrugs. His eye twitches. “We should ask the waiter to tell us if any news breaks.”

“Or,” Alyssa wraps her fingers in his sleeve, “we can talk about that new Spiderman movie because, I've gotta say, it was the worst one yet.”

Between them, a phone buzzes. Out of the corner of Lovett’s eye, he sees Jon jerk forward before he can stop himself.

“You,” Lovett splutters, pointing his finger at her, “cannot take this from me.”

“Oh, come on,” she narrows her eyes at him, but they're light and playful. “That romance with Ironman was all kinds of wrong.”

“It was _animated_. We don't know how old Tony was supposed to be.”

“Sure,” Dan agrees, easily. He leans forward, his knee sliding against Lovett's under the table. It might be an accident, with anyone else it would be an accident, but he's been pulling the same moves for a decade and a half, now, and Lovett knows better.

Frankly, Lovett would be more impressed by an intelligent take on potentially age-inappropriate comic superheroes. Lovett slides his elbow onto the table. “I’m listening.”

Dan's eyes flick to him, the space between them flaring with heat. “I agree with you,” he says, slowly, a smirk already twitching at the corner of his lips. “But, my question is, how does sex in the Ironman suit work, anyway? Is there a panel? Can he take off just the bottom half? It all sounds incredibly unromantic.”

The table shakes a little as the phone pile buzzes.

Alyssa throws her head back and laughs so hard her glasses fall backwards off her head. Cody catches them in his greasy hand.

Lovett raises an eyebrow. _Like you would know_ , he says with his eyes, while the rest of his body telegraphs his laughter.

Dan doesn't look away from him as he shrugs. “All I'm saying is that the first gay superhero deserves a little romance. Or, at the very least, to see Iron Man’s face.”

“Here, here,” Alyssa raises her glass.

On the table between them, the phone pile shakes three times in quick succession.

“That’s it,” Jon says. He slides his chair back, so quickly that it wobbles at the edges of Lovett’s vision, and drops his credit card as ransom. “There’s a dozen fire ants dancing around my brain. I give in.”

“You know,” Alyssa says, slowly, a touch of laughter still in her eyes, “scientists have said that thirty minutes is the threshold for addiction.”

Jon grasps the top phone and it wobbles, precariously, between his fingers before he pulls it, deftly and lovingly, into his palm.

“How long was that?” Tommy asks.

Alyssa glances at the MVMT watch Dan had given her for Christmas a few years back. Lovett had helped him pick it out, after numerous phone calls to the MVMT CEO and hours poring over the catalogue. “Twenty-two.”

Lovett whistles. “That’s embarrassing.”

Jon curls back into his chair, resting his raised knee against the table and turning his phone to his face for facial recognition.

“Go ahead,” Cody shrugs, reaching for another slice, “take your hit. I’ll take free pizza any day.”

“This means we’re all of the hook, right?” Dan asks, already leaning over to unbury his phone from the bottom of the pile.

“Fuck off, I already dropped my credit card,” Jon frowns. He shakes his phone, frowns again, then presses the power button. The screen lights up, a pastel of blues and greens and yellows lighting up Jon’s face so that, when Lovett turns to question him, he can see the exact series of emotions flash across Jon’s face.

“What?” Alyssa asks, crossing her legs and steepling her hands on the table. “Don’t tell me. The infrastructure bill failed?” Jon doesn’t respond. “There’s been another data breach? Fuck, that would make three this month and we’re barely halfway through.” The phone turns off and Jon’s face is dampened again by the artificial pizza parlor lights. “A shooting? An earthquake?”

Jon shakes his head, sliding his knee back onto the floor. “No, it’s nothing. It’s just- It’s not my phone, surprised me a little, is all.”

He turns the phone face down and slides it towards Lovett, stretching across Cody rather than relaying it. Then he lets it go, quickly, and dives across the table for his own phone, burying his face immediately in his screen.

“Sorry?” Lovett tries, pulling his phone into his lap and flipping it over, “what? Is that intern sending me porn again? I keep telling her not to, but-”

“Don’t joke about that.” Jon pushes his chair back again, his voice breaking over _joke_. “You’re the CEO of a fucking media network. Don’t fucking joke about that.”

Lovett flinches. “Jon. What the fuck?”

Jon shakes his head and doesn’t look at any of them. “Emily texted. Funyuns craving, you know how hormones go. Tommy, I’ll leave this with you-” He pushes his credit card towards Tommy. “Another three pitchers max. I’ll be checking my statement.”

Tommy nods, looking at Lovett. His brows are so far furrowed that they’ve disappeared into his receding hairline. Lovett shrugs and glances down at the notifications on his lock screen. Three from Twitter, a couple from Instagram, and a series of texts from-

Fuck.

Lovett pushes back his own chair, leaving his half-eaten slice sitting on his plate. “I’ll go with you. I remember a little corner store on, ahh- a store on the corner, I mean. Went there a few times, during the primary.”

Jon frowns, his hip half turned towards the door. “I think I can find it.”

Lovett shrugs, reaching his side and nodding towards the door in a casual tilt that Jon can’t rationally ignore. “I’m jonesing for a Diet Coke. Might even get a full liter.”

Jon sighs and follows Lovett out the door, his footsteps ringing across the empty sidewalk. Lovett can hear the shuffle in his heels, the way he’s scuffing his soles, the way he’s been dragging his heels since weeks before he went on that damn baby moon.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Lovett says, when he reaches the corner. There’s a streetlamp sitting in front of a bodega, lights low at this late hour.

“You really did know a place,” Jon murmurs, glancing at it.

Lovett sighs. “You really think I’d lie to a pregnant woman like that? How far do you think I’ve sunk?”

Jon stares at him, shocked enough to catch Lovett’s eyes for the first time in so long that Lovett had almost forgotten how Jon’s eyes wrinkle at the corner when he’s upset. “Emily didn’t actually text.”

“No shit.”

“Lovett-”

“No.” Lovett cuts him off. Ten minutes ago, Lovett was eating the best late-night pizza on the South Side, with Dan’s knee pressed against his and Alyssa’s laughter in his ears. Six months ago, he was on stage in Orlando, with no idea that it was the last good show he’d ever do. With no idea that it was Dan’s last show. Dan had always been his best audience. A year ago, Jon had laughed so loudly that Elijah had had to equalize his tone when Lovett had asked if he was going to run. Lovett’s sick of losing all the best things in his life. He’s done. “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to be mad _at me_ for this.”

Jon spreads his legs for balance and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’ve been talking to _your agent_?”

Lovett closes his eyes, wondering, briefly, if he can deny. If he should deny it, and the two missed calls and four missed texts from his agent, sitting in his notifications. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Jon, yeah. Yeah, I was talking to my agent. I submitted a script, I guess they liked it.” Lovett shrugs, glancing at his phone, still in his hand. “I figured I should have an exit strategy.”

“An exit strategy,” Jon repeats.

“Are we going to do this all night or-”

“Fuck you.” Jon pushes past him, walking a few steps into the darker side of the bodega, before turning back around. “You had a fucking exit strategy?”

Lovett shakes his head, helplessly.

He doesn’t want to have an exit strategy. His whole life, he’s had an exit strategy. If not Williams, Vassar. If not the White House, Hollywood. If not comedy, politics. But Crooked Media was supposed to be the one thing he never needed an exit strategy from. He was supposed to spend the rest of his days wearing increasingly ridiculous colored pants, talking about politics, and running this fucking company he started with his two best friends. It wasn’t- Lovett can admit that it wasn’t exactly everything he wanted, especially not after Dan left six months ago, but life is about compromise and this, he figured, is a compromise he could live with for the rest of his days.

Lovett was supposed to retire at the Improv, with one of those stupid plastic Death Day hats and a bottle of champagne. He might have even let Elijah make one of those retrospective videos of all his worst bits, with Tommy playing mournful chords in the background.

Lovett never wanted a fucking exit strategy. 

And he’s so furious with Jon for making him find one that Lovett hasn’t looked him in the eye for fucking months.

Lovett looks at him now, though, as he takes a step forward. “What are you accusing me of?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jon spreads his hands, his cheeks flushing. “Never committing to a career, for one.”

Lovett scoffs. “Fuck you. I have more blood, sweat, and tears in that company than you and Tommy combined.”

Jon holds out his fingers and pushes his middle one down. “Two, having an ego the size of fucking Texas.”

“Strange choice of locales,” Lovett tries to joke. His heart’s beating so high in his throat that he can barely breathe.

“Three,” Jon holds out his ring finger, “you always have one foot out the door. Of everything. Your friendships, your relationship, your company.”

Lovett’s heart rises, choking him in memories. Friends he’s left, in New York and DC and LA, who he calls every day, then every month, then a holiday card once a year, then impersonal updates on their kids and their opinions of the New York Times on his Facebook feed. Dan’s eyes, so wide and blue and distant. The Holiday Party photo they had taken last year, with all their employees decked out in Pod Save Hanukkah t-shirts and reindeer hats, the last one they had taken before it started to go south.

“Fuck you.”

“Lovett.”

“No, fuck you, Jon.” Lovett shakes his head. It feels hopeless, standing outside this bodega on 51st Street. The path of his life, finally, after too many years of forcibly - prematurely - steering it on his own, catching up to him. Lovett hates losing control. “Which one of us has one foot out the door, huh?”

Jon flinches. “Lovett.”

“What? You really thought I didn’t know?” Lovett shakes his head. “That I can’t put ‘schedules a California coastal live swing on the summer calendar’ and ‘suddenly starts talking like a message document from the California State Party’ together to make 4. Where 4 equals _Favreau for Senate, 2022_?”

“Lovett,” Jon says, for the third time.

“When were you going to tell me? The morning before picket signs went up all over the neighborhood?” Lovett’s voice cracks a little and he shakes his head. “Right before you went on stage to make an announcement speech without asking for any of my input in writing it?”

Jon frowns at him. “Of course I was going to ask for your input.”

“When?”

Jon shrugs, his shoulders folding inwards. “When the time was right. When I’d stopped feeling guilty about all the things Tommy and I were dumping on you. When-” Jon shakes his head. “When I could stand the way you’re looking at me right now.”

Lovett blinks. His eyelashes are wet. “Fuck you, Jon,” he whispers, and walks away.

***

_August 2008_

Lovett can hear the cheers ringing throughout the Pepsi Center as state after state pledge their delegates to the newly-elected Democratic nominee. 

He fiddles with his headphones but doesn't turn up the volume. It's cathartic, in a masochistic kind of way, to hear the inevitable roll call of Obama's name. Like the last lick of punishment for a hard-fought and hard-lost campaign.

"I thought I'd find you up here."

Lovett jumps before he feels Dan's fingers pulling at his earbuds. Dan dangles a beer - a Miller Lite, which Lovett refuses to be embarrassed about - in front of him. Lovett takes it. “You remembered.”

Lovett's caught snatches of him over the past eighteen months. With his tie undone, leaning exhaustedly against the wall of an elevator in South Carolina as the doors closed. Frowning down at his Blackberry, with dark creases in his forehead, at a rally in Texas. Catching Lovett's eye over a crowded spin room after the second debate. Always with a room of people, a bitter campaign, and so many regretful words between them.

Dan sits next to him, crossing his ankles on the table and opening his own beer with an opener he pulls from his pocket. It’s an IPA, one of the local ones he doesn’t really like but drinks anyway. It’s the first time he’s been close enough for Lovett to feel the heat radiating off his body since Lovett left his apartment on that dark, snowy, late December day.

“Of course,” Dan smirks. “How could I ever forget your absolutely awful taste in, well, all things?”

Dan looks good, centered, brimming with purpose and hope and belief and all the things that Lovett had thought, once upon a time, that _he_ could provide. Once upon a younger, naive time - between when he'd come out to Hillary Clinton in their second ever meeting and she'd asked him to work on the draft for her pro-civil unions speech a few months later - when Lovett had forgotten, for just a short while, what industry they're in. When he’d managed to convince himself that Dan would ever- that they could ever make this work.

Lovett knows better now. Lovett knows better about a lot of things. 

“Chicken nuggets are awesome,” Lovett bites back, “so, fuck you.”

Dan laughs. “I do eat chicken fingers now, actually.”

“Of course you do.” Lovett shakes his head and takes a long draw of his beer. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating with your people?”

“They’ve been drinking since noon.” Dan laughs.

Lovett chuckles. “So the fun’s just about to start.”

Dan smiles. Lovett can see the edge of it where Dan’s looking down to pick at the label on his bottle. “And I wanted to-” Dan shrugs and looks at Lovett, the full force of his gaze taking in Lovett’s mid-speech mess of curls and the tired rings that have been building under his eyes since January. “I wanted to check on you.”

Lovett takes another, long swig of his beer and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

Dan watches him for a moment, then nods at Lovett’s laptop, sitting dark on the table in front of them. Lovett needs to find a power cord, soon. “How’s the speech coming?”

The beer goes sour on Lovett’s tongue. He swallows and puts down the bottle. “Is that what you came here to ask me?”

Dan lets his beer drop to his lap. “Lovett.”

“It’s fine. It’s good. It’s all about ‘Renewing America’s Promise’ or whatever bullshit you all decided it should be about.” The front rungs of Lovett’s chair clang to the ground and he starts to rise. “We got the unity message loud and clear, so you can go back to your boss and tell him that she’s not going to embarrass him.”

“Lovett,” Dan says, again. He reaches out to squeeze Lovett’s knee, holding him steady. “I deserved that.”

Lovett looks away. Dan’s fingers are warm even through his suit pants. “You did.”

“I really did come to see how you’re doing,” Dan insists, softly, his voice so familiar, in the deepest recesses of Lovett’s memories.

Lovett takes a deep breath and shrugs. “It sucks, but-” He chuckles a little ruefully. “I always land on my feet.”

“You do. That’s what I always-”

Lovett turns his head. Dan’s only a few inches away, his eyes bright and clear and Lovett can almost, _almost_ , fill in the rest of that sentence.

Dan clears his throat. He doesn’t move his hand. “What are you going to do, now?”

“I have a place in New York.” Lovett shakes his head. “Maybe I’ll try my hand at stand up again. Fuck, my ego’s already shrinking, just thinking about it.”

Dan laughs and squeezes his knee. “Well. If you’re ever in town-”

“Yeah.” Lovett swallows. “Yeah, I, ahh, know where you live.”

“I guess so.” Dan stands, pausing at Lovett’s shoulder. “I’m not in charge of the speechwriting staff, but, if we have an opening- promise me you’ll at least take our call? We could really use you.”

The wounds in Lovett’s heart have barely started to heal and he has a whole host of new ones in his mind that haven’t even begun to scab. It’s too soon. Lovett thinks, maybe, it’ll always be too soon.

He nods, though, and watches Dan walk away. Then he turns back to his laptop for one last speech.


	2. Part II: 2010 & 2021

_May 2010_

“Gin and tonics all around,” Jon calls, over the noise in the Dubliner. “And shots. Fireball?” He glances at Lovett for confirmation. Lovett nods. Jon looks back at their waitress and repeats, “Fireball.”

Lovett leans back against the bar. The rod digs into his shoulder blades, but he arches around it, stretching his sore muscles. He’s been preparing the Correspondents’ Dinner speech for six weeks, during early morning Starbucks runs and late nights in the West Wing mess, jokes written in and around ACA and tax policy speeches. He really needs a massage.

“Here.” Jon hands Lovett his shot, before passing the tray around. “First round’s on me, then you’re all on your own.”

A mix of grumbles and cheers rises from the communications staff gathered around the long table in the back room, which Jon - well, Jon’s secretary, Eric - reserved for the after party.

Lovett knocks back his shot, spluttering a little when someone knocks him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Lovett, good speech, man.”

Lovett narrows his eyes at - Josh? Justin? Jason? - the new media monitor who’s been sitting in lower press for a couple of months now. Tommy’s said … something about him, but Lovett can’t honestly remember if it was a good or a bad something.

“Ahh,” Lovett says, slowly. “It’s a team effort, but, thanks.”

“Nah, everyone knows you’re the funny bone of this operation.”

“It’s not nice to pigeon hole the guy on the scooter,” Lovett quips, then holds up his empty shot glass - “I’ve gotta” - and escapes into and through the crowd.

He slides outside, sighing deeply as he leans against the side of the building. The wall is wet and scratchy, a particularly cold and rainy DC spring settling into the brick, and Lovett sighs, long and deep. He’s not going to miss DC weather, if he leaves. When he leaves.

Someone clears their throat, gravel shuffling under a pair of dress shoes Lovett still recognizes, over four years later. Lovett blinks his eyes open to see Dan, hunched, embarrassed, against the wind rushing through the alley. There’s a cigarette dangling between his fingers, nestled in the dry space his shoulders have created.

Lovett frowns. It’s been a long, hard year for everyone in the communications department, and Lovett’s been watching Dan’s shoulders slump, further and further, with each passing day since ACA passed in March, but this is- “You’ve resorted to smoking?”

Dan frowns at the cigarette, but takes one more long drag before dropping it to the ground and snubbing it out with the toe of his shoes. “We all need our vices.”

“Sure, but-” Lovett shrugs. It’s been years since Dan’s health was his responsibility. “There are less cancerous ways of blowing off steam.”

“Like what?” Dan asks.

Lovett pulls a micro-joint from his pocket. “Just enough to take the edge off, not enough to set off the drug tests.”

Dan shakes his head. “I really need to not know about this.” But he reaches out, taking the joint and creating a wind shield around his lighter. He blows a cone of smoke, then leans his head back, sighing happily, and hands it over.

Their fingers brush and Lovett tenses, fractionally, before he forces his muscles to relax. He takes a long puff, then presses back, his shoulder tight against Dan’s as he closes his eyes. “Okay, give it to me. I’m open to constructive criticism when I’m crossfaded.”

Dan laughs. His breath is warm as it brushes across Lovett’s ear. “No criticism. Even the joke about the three piggies of the Supreme Court landed.”

Lovett snorts, taking a second hit and passing it over without opening his eyes. “You had little faith about that one.”

“I knew I should have listened to you,” Dan admits. He turns onto his side, his arm braced against the brick and his body heat radiating between them. His voice is low, but it rings through Lovett’s ears and his elbows and his knees, rocking Lovett hard enough that he has to spread his fingers along the wall to steady himself. “I should always listen to you, where comedy is concerned.”

“Oh?” Lovett asks, reaching out for the blunt and feeling the nub burn his fingertips. “Only about comedy?”

“No,” Dan breathes, twisting the rest of his body so he’s standing between Lovett’s knees. “ _District 9_ was a great movie. I even used it, the other day, in an immigration meeting.”

Lovett laughs, opening his mouth to argue, but then Dan is kissing him. He tastes like the adrenaline of successful speeches and the nicotine of his half-a-cigarette and he smells like sweat and the mold that pervades the OEOB’s basement offices. His hands find that spot on Lovett’s shoulder blades that Lovett was trying to roll out earlier, the one that always aches after long speeches. 

Lovett may have dedicated the last few years to politics, but he hasn’t been celibate. There was the organizer in South Carolina, who drove Lovett around for three days before he started laughing at his jokes and another two before he spread his knees. There was the state senate candidate in Kansas, blonde as the cornfields, and just as silver tongued. And there’s the HHS intern Lovett’s been taking home, on and off, for the past few months, whenever Tommy and Cody are scheduled to be out of the apartment.

As Dan tilts his chin, though, slotting their mouths together like no time has passed in the years since they’ve done this, it feels like Lovett’s first kiss all over again. Dan knows his body, reads it with the ease and confidence he brings to every meeting and plays it with all the creativity he brinks to the few parts of his life he really cares about. 

Lovett sighs into his mouth, arching his back to draw himself closer, and yelps as the blunt burns down to his fingertips.

Dan laughs against his lips, tugging at Lovett’s wrist until the ash falls to the pavement. Dan stamps it out with the same dress shoe, practiced and easy.

He looks back at Lovett, his eyes only a little glassy as he whispers, “come home with me.”

Lovett’s heart leaps. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please.” Dan presses a kiss behind his ear. “The apartment is so quiet without you. I miss you. I have missed you.”

Lovett should say no.

Lovett should prize his career and his reputation and the corner of his heart that still beats around the scars of Dan leaving him.

Lovett shakes his head, but he tips his chin for another kiss. “Call us a cab.”

***

_August 2021_

“An iced coffee,” Lovett orders, squinting up at the board. “Low on the ice and fill it three quarters of the way.” Lovett drops his phone and wallet onto the counter to demonstrate.

“With three shots,” Dan finishes from behind him. “And you're gonna need to refill your milk canisters when we're done.”

Lovett turns on his heel, narrowing his eyes. “Where'd you come from?”

Dan shrugs. “And an iced latte, venti, for me please.” Dan hands over his card.

“I can't call out hypocrisy when you swoop in and fall for it,” Lovett rolls his eyes, but doesn't fight the free coffee.

He grabs his cup from the agitated barista and takes the lid off as he heads to the condiment bar. He shakes the almond milk canister, satisfied that it’s mostly full, and dumps half of it in with a couple packets of sugar.

Dan leans against the edge of the bar, crossing his ankles and already sipping on his own latte. “Time is money, Lovett. Haven’t your parents taught you anything?”

Lovett glares at him, stirring his coffee with a straw and, satisfied, clicking the lid back into place without looking down. “Money is money. Haven’t your parents taught you that?”

Dan laughs, sliding his hand down to Lovett’s lower back.

Lovett turns to maintain the glare, but Dan’s face is inches from his. So close that if Lovett tipped his chin just right- He shakes his head. “I was just grabbing a coffee and heading back to the hotel.”

Dan shrugs. “We don’t have anywhere to be until the cocktail party tonight. Sit with me for a minute.”

“That request hasn’t, traditionally, ended super well for us,” Lovett reminds him, but he does let himself be led out onto the patio.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, casually. “Maybe it just hasn’t been our time, yet.”

Lovett snorts. “Maybe.”

Dan pushes his sunglasses down his nose and shrugs. His “maybe” has none of the crusty edges Lovett’s has.

Lovett takes a long sip of his coffee rather than trying to unpack that. Reading too much into the tilt of Dan’s shoulders and the blue of his eyes has never gotten Lovett anywhere good, either, and he honestly has too many other puzzles to work through at the moment. It’s been six months, Dan can wait another-

It’s been six months.

Lovett drops his cup to the table, so quickly that milk and coffee splash over the sides. “How long have you known?”

Dan frowns, leaning towards the table behind him and stealing a few napkins from their dispenser with a murmured _thank you_ to the confused couple. He hands them over.

Lovett takes them, but doesn’t wipe his hand or his cup. “How long have you known that Jon’s going to run?”

Dan raises an eyebrow, so far that it lifts over the rim of his ridiculously trendy black aviators. “Since right now.”

Lovett’s eyes narrow. “How long have you known that he was thinking about it?”

Dan flinches. He sits back in his chair. 

Lovett’s been cataloguing Dan’s nervous ticks for a decade and a half, now. He has them down to a science. “You went looking. Six months ago, you went looking.”

Dan takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t as simple as that.”

“Illuminating,” Lovett scoffs.

Dan snorts. “You are the most impossible-” He takes another deep breath and drops his elbows to the table, leaning closer. “I was tired. We all were tired.”

Lovett remembers. Lovett had been pulling double-pod days, sometimes, in between double tours and producing a handful of new shows and juggling emails from the DNC and the DCCC and every Party member who had thoughts on the launch of Crooked’s latest registration campaign. Lovett had been fucking exhausted.

Lovett is still fucking exhausted.

“In my heart, I knew that I had to be done with CNN, but where did that leave me? Pod-ing for fifty minutes a week and a weekend every month or so?” Dan sighs. “I don’t know. I needed- I needed a break.”

Lovett’s fingers tap against the table top, a Mozart concerto that had been drummed into his head when he was twelve years old and only resurfaces with the worst of his anxiety. Dan reaches out, wrapping his fingers around Lovett’s wrist.

“You know how I feel about Crooked,” he says softly, insistently, his fingers tight and warm and serious against Lovett’s skin. “You know I think it’s the most important thing to come out of political media since Fox News. And you know how important it has been to me, personally, to be a part of it-”

“Do I?” Lovett interrupts. 

“But,” Dan continues, pointedly, “I was feeling stuck, wanting more, for the first time ready to _choose_ more over my job. And I knew I’d never actually get to have the personal life I wanted if I didn’t get out of the day-to-day grind of political communications.”

Lovett’s heart thuds. He tries to pull his hand away, but Dan holds him there.

“I wasn’t looking. I wouldn’t have known what to look for.” Dan shrugs. “But then Jon came to me with a problem and POTUS came to me with an out and it was too coincidental not to mean anything.”

Lovett frowns. He’s always believed that fate is of his own making, but- He’s never known quite what to do with it when he’s been confronted with it.

Dan raises a pointed eyebrow. “Jon’s going to make a wonderful Senator.”

Heat flares up Lovett’s spine. “Of course he is.”

“And what POTUS is doing here, it’s really inspiring.” Dan shrugs. “I really feel like I’m making a difference, in this neighborhood, with these kids, with the scholars who come from all over the world to meet at this Library. And I get to do it all between nine and five.”

Lovett snorts.

“Well,” Dan flushes. “Old habits die hard. There’s a few late night calls with visitors from Europe and Asia, but, for the most part?” Dan shrugs. “I haven’t missed a Sixers game all season.”

Lovett laughs, a little, despite himself. “Priorities.”

“Only some of them.” Dan runs his thumb up Lovett’s lifeline. “What has Jon offered you?”

Lovett looks down at Dan’s thumb. “Nothing.”

Dan stills for a moment, then starts again, slow and rhythmic. “I didn’t plan to get first swing. I’ve been pitching all wrong.”

“Dan-”

Dan grins and pulls his hand back, crossing his fingers around his cup. The ice has half melted, and the condensation pools around Dan’s hands. “POTUS would like to offer you a job.”

Lovett swallows. “A job?”

Dan nods. “Community engagement. Grassroots organizing, just like you like, but with all the national access the Obama Foundation name and mission gets you.”

“I-” Lovett doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. 

For the past few months, he’s been formulating his options in his head. Hold down the fort at Crooked while Jon and Tommy traipse across every county in California, even the terrible ones, out in the desert with no ocean and no trees and not even any good Chinese food. Traipse across those same counties with them, writing speeches or whipping up voters or whatever bone of a job Jon might throw him, eating more McDonald’s by the day. Go back to Hollywood, produce the show his agent had been pinging him about last night, take the money and the limited fame and the comedic outlet and hope it counteracts the imposter syndrome he’d felt so distinctly last time around.

Choose a door. Any door. In the end, it’s a choice between the lesser of whatever and meh and who cares.

Lovett shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just promise you’ll think about it,” Dan insists. “Just promise that you won’t take Jon’s job before you at least consider it.”

Lovett nods.

“Promise?”

Lovett nods, again. Even his voice feels sticky in this humidity. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Dan beams. He pushes his chair back, his hands twitching towards Lovett again, but settles on squeezing Lovett's shoulder. “Thank you.”

***

_May 2011_

Lovett’s fingers are a little numb. He’d like to blame the adrenaline of his third consecutive successful Correspondents’ Dinner. Or, maybe the three days without sleep, spent in Jon’s office, refining jokes and wondering at the people rushing in and out of the Sit Room. It’s more likely, though, that Lovett has to blame the three gins and unseemly number of shot rounds Jon has already bought the team by the time midnight rolls around.

His fingers aren’t so numb that he doesn’t feel the warm flex of Dan’s fingers as he hands over Lovett’s fourth glass. They aren’t so numb that Lovett doesn't feel the way Dan pulls back, so quickly that the glass nearly slips through Lovett’s palm.

“Hey,” Lovett murmurs, dropping his voice so low that it’ll be hard for even Dan to hear him, “it’s more suspicious when you _don’t_ touch me in public.”

Dan’s eyes narrow to slits of the dark, unreadable blue they’ve been for the past few weeks. He hisses, with none of the careful subtlety Lovett imbued in his own voice. “Don’t do that.”

Lovett frowns. “Do what?” 

“Act like _I’m_ the only one with stakes here.” Dan reaches past him to grab his own drink.

“I’ve been out for the entire time I’ve been in politics,” Lovett sighs, exasperated. They’ve been dancing around this - whatever _this_ is - since before Lovett lost himself in the speech and Dan lost himself in foreign policy. Maybe it’s the gin, or maybe it’s the great relief of having the speech off his shoulders, but Lovett doesn’t want to dance around it anymore.

Dan’s mouth turns down, the edges of his lips pale and thin, as unhealthy as the rest of him. “There are different levels of being out.”

Lovett bristles. “I don’t know that that means. You’re the communications director try to, oh, I don’t know, use your communications skills.”

“That’s rich,” Dan glares at him, dropping his words into his glass. “Coming from the speechwriter who doesn’t know how to use his words.”

“If you have something to say to me,” Lovett challenges, “then say it.”

Dan glances around them, then twists his fingers around Lovett’s elbow. It’s the most personal touch Dan’s allowed them to have since this all started, again, and Lovett allows himself a moment to bask in the surprise before Dan pulls him out, past the fire escape, into the humid DC May air. The streetlights filter into the alleyway, just like they did last year. Dan has deep, dark rings under his eyes, just like he did last year. He looks nervous, his toes digging into the cracked edges of the pavement, just like he did last year.

Last year, though, it had been four years since Lovett had kissed him and he’d felt miles closer.

Lovett crosses his arms over his chest, his glass dangling off the edge of his fingers. “It’s awfully rich, getting coming out advice from you.”

Dan snorts and shakes his head. He takes a long sip of his whiskey. “You always say that, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

Lovett’s eyes narrow. His heart’s running towards a fork in the road, and he wants to pull back, wants to change course, but he’s never been one to give in once he’s made a decision, whether he wants the gold at the end of the rainbow or not. “Don’t minimize everything I’ve been through. You know exactly how hard it’s been to be as out as I am in this job we’re in.”

“Is that why you’re leaving it?” Dan bites out.

Lovett freezes.

A breeze blows down the alleyway, ruffling the hair around Dan’s ears and his half-untucked dress shirt.

Lovett swallows. “Jon told you.”

“Weeks ago, yeah,” Dan shrugs.

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Not really my place.” Dan takes another long swig of his drink and barely grimaces. “Were you going to tell me, or was I just going to come home one day to find your drawers empty?”

Lovett closes his eyes. The gin pounds in his ears and he tries to force his thoughts around it. “I was going to tell you. I just- I hadn’t figured out how, yet.”

“Fuck.” Dan stubs his toes against a particularly large crack. His voice is choked. “Jon.”

Lovett squeezes his eyes, pulling all the arguments he’s told himself around his shoulders, closing inwards. “I can’t stay here. There’s nothing- I’m not growing in my job and you- Fuck, Dan, you’re still not out to a single person.”

Lovett opens his eyes again just in time to see Dan’s back stiffen and his eyes slit and flash. “Thank god for that. I’d shout it from the rooftops if I had even an inkling that you were in this for real, but-” Dan spreads his arms wide. Whiskey splashes down his wrist and into the cuffs of his shirt. “You’re such a hypocrite.”

Lovett stumbles backwards, only stopping when his back hits the rough brick of the wall. “I’m the hypocrite?”

Dan shakes his head. The edges of his eyes are wet. “You may be out, but there’s still a fence a mile high around your heart and it doesn’t matter how hard I try to scale it, I’m never going to succeed while you’re this ashamed of who you are.”

Lovett struggles to breath, his chest rising and falling against the brick. “Who’s fault is that? The only man I’ve ever-”

The silence hangs between them.

“Please,” Dan snorts, angular and sharp. “Finish that sentence. Please, for once, finish that fucking sentence.”

The words stop in Lovett’s throat. He shakes his head, wildly, trying to dislodge them, trying to dislodge the image of Dan, standing in front of him, like Lovett’s meeting every one of the worst expectations Dan has for him. 

Dan laughs, bitterly. “I thought not.”

Lovett swallows, hard and fast. The world is spinning, hazy and so, so quickly, around him. “Dan.”

Dan shakes his head. He reaches out to clink his glass against Lovett’s, still dangling, untouched, from his fingers. “We caught Bin Laden a few hours ago. You’ll read it in the papers tomorrow. It’s a great night for the administration.”

Dan sounds hollow. He looks hollow. Lovett’s pretty sure it’s his fault, that he’s the one who cut the strings of Dan’s marionette, before Dan could cut his, again.

“That’s why we had to cut the joke.”

Dan nods, jerkily. “You should probably spend the night in your apartment.” He steps forward, tipping his drink back and frowning at it when he finds it empty. “In fact, you should probably spend every night there between now and-” His voice breaks a little. “- and when you leave.”

The fire door bangs open and closed.

Lovett leans his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut against his tears.

***

_August 2021_

“No, no, no,” Tommy laughs, swinging Logan onto his shoulders, “it wasn't on Wabash. It was-” He snaps his fingers as he tries to remember. Logan copies him, laughing and sliding his fingers together without making a sound.

“Washington?” Jon offers with a frown.

“Don't tell me your early-20s bachelor flophouse was on _Washington_ Street,” Lovett holds his hand to his chest. “My overactive imagination couldn't take it.”

Tommy shrugs. Logan bounces a little with the motion, laughing. “I don't think so?”

“Fu-” Jon starts, then glances at Logan and slides into, “fus-zizzle, we're getting old.”

Tommy snorts.

Cody slaps Jon on the shoulder. “It happens to the best of us.”

Jon glares at him, “thanks, very helpful.” Then his face smoothes. “I do remember though- Tommy, do you remember the night with the peanut butter?”

“Oh god,” Tommy's face pales, then flushes a particularly fuschia-tinted shade of red. “We don't need to relive this story.”

“I think we do,” Jon's eyes twinkle.

Lovett tunes out as Jon starts describing the lights on the ceiling of the third bar they'd gone to - “right! I remember, Cubs shaped, yeah?” Tommy exclaims - and long before he gets to the punch line. Which, if Lovett was a betting man, or at least a better betting man, he'd put money on it ending with Tommy on the floor with a giant jar of peanut butter and a soup spoon.

They're on a street corner on the Near North side. Lovett looks up at the buildings towering over him on all sides, feeling the same mix of overwhelming claustrophobia and freedom that he always gets when he goes home to New York.

Jon had _insisted_ that the flop house was on this corner. Just like he'd insisted that it was on the one just north of it. And the corner just east of that one. Lovett hadn't believe him the first three times, he had no expectations this time.

It's a game they play every time they come back to Chicago. The endless hunt for a flophouse that's lost in the recesses of their beer-addled brains and, honestly, was probably torn down years ago if the stories of its structural integrity are to be believed.

Jon and Tommy think it's fun to try, anyway. Lovett thinks it's about as fun as a nail to the head, to remember what it was like walking into the transition office on his first day, all eyes on the _Clinton Staffer_ tattoo he'd been pretty sure he hadn't gotten on his forehead. Like choosing to back the first major female candidate was such a bad idea. As if his choice to believe in her, when she had believed in him, was so untenable. 

Sometimes, Lovett thinks he's spent the past decade making up for a decision that he doesn't actually regret. 

“Pregnant woman, here, carrying a bowling ball around on sore hips,” Em complains, glaring at Jon through the curtain of her hair. 

Jon opens his mouth. Em glares at him, saying something that might be _don't you dare_ or _I can't believe you dragged me out in this humidity to stand on a street corner and forget where you used to live for twenty minutes_ or just _I need to pee_. Lovett's never quite learned to read their silent language.

Jon closes his mouth.

Em wraps her fingers around Lovett's elbow. “Buy me a coffee.” Jon glares and she corrects, “decaf,” before he can argue. “We'll let these idiots keep trying to find a house that, honestly?, I'm not convinced ever even existed.”

Lovett laughs and tucks her into his side, turning them towards the closest Starbucks. The cool air hits them the moment they get inside and Em sighs in so much relief that Lovett almost reevaluates his conspiracy theory that she was trying to get him alone.

It comes rushing back, though, as he comes back with their iced coffees and she's already sitting back in her seat, hands over her belly and eyes trained on him.

“I’ve been thinking about this flophouse conspiracy,” he says, not quite meeting her eyes as he sits across from her and slides over her cup and a handful of sugar packets. “And there’s only one really viable option. They’re clearly covering up something embarrassing.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lovett takes a sip of his drink. This is his third coffee since the one Dan bought him that morning, but the caffeine is still good. “That’s why we need to pull in Alyssa.”

“Sure,” Em agrees, easily. “We’ll talk to her about it at the gala tonight.”

Lovett holds out his fist. She bumps it, then spreads her fingers, taking his hand.

“Lovett.”

He tries to pull his hand away, but she’s deceptively strong. She’s always been deceptively able to handle him. “We don’t need to talk about this.”

“I think we do.” Lovett dares looking up and her eyes are soft and warm. “You were the first one I suggested he talk to, when he came to me with this ridiculous idea.”

“Well,” Lovett looks away again, to the shape of her fingers around his, pale and soft and warm. “He didn’t. He still hasn’t, not really.”

“I know.” She sighs. “You know how he is. This whole campaign thing has been like one long horror movie he’s had to watch from between his fingers.”

Despite himself, Lovett chuckles.

“And he’s still watching, like he’s a bit player in his own movie.”

Lovett snorts. “Well, that’s stupid. He’s going to be so good at this.”

She sniffles and he looks up again to see tears in her eyes. He hands over a napkin and she takes it with a sigh, “fucking hormones,” and dabs at them.

“They’re good,” Lovett tries to joke. “They make you seem approachable. Political wives are supposed to be the approachable ones.” She throws the napkin at his chest and he laughs. “Although I don’t know how that works when the politician himself is going to hug every baby and shake every hand and turn over the entire fucking government to fix every wrong his constituents have ever been wronged.”

“See?” Emily chuckles and holds out her hand for the napkin again. “You’d make a wonderful comms director.”

Lovett’s eyes widen. “Is that what he-? Is that what he wants me to do?”

She nods. “He was going to ask you this morning, but you weren’t at breakfast, and now he’s just dragging his feet talking about peanut butter.” She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “I love him, but sometimes I just want to throw him out a window, you know?”

Lovett laughs. “Yeah, I know that feeling well.” He sighs, dropping his voice a little and squeezing her hand first, this time. “I was getting coffee this morning. With Dan.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t- There’s nothing- It’s all water under the bridge. He didn’t even mention-” Lovett looks away, feeling as stupid as he always does when he has to talk around the most important, and most fruitless, part of his life. “-anything,” he finishes, inadequately.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Lovett snorts.

“No, hey.” She lets go of his hand to tap her fingers along his wrist, thoughtfully. “You know, when I first met you, it was that summer you were moving to LA?”

Lovett nods.

“And I hated you so much at first.”

He starts. “Emily-”

She shrugs, taking a sip of her coffee. “It didn’t last very long.”

“That’s good to hear,” he frowns. “But if you- why is this the first time we’re talking about this?”

She shrugs, again. “Because it’s embarrassing. I was being stupid, not seeing the forest for the trees or whatever fucking metaphor you wanna use for that steel-enforced wall you keep around your heart.”

Lovett blinks and tries to pull his hand back. Again, she doesn’t let him.

“Jon had told me you were leaving, had bitched a little about how much work it would be after you were gone. Because he was absolutely certain he’d never be able to find someone to replace you.” Em shrugs. “And he didn’t. Not really.”

Lovett smiles softly. “I never wanted to make it harder on him.”

“I know. I know that now.” She laughs softly. “But at the time I thought you were some asshole leaving Jon’s dream job to rub elbows with Hollywood bigwigs.”

“Well, I did do that.”

“Reluctantly,” she laughs. “It took me a little while to realize that you didn’t actually want to leave. You were just- searching for something.”

Lovett swallows. He’s been thinking about that decision, made so fraughtfully over so many months. He’s still not sure it was the right one, except that it put him on the path to Crooked and anything that put him on that path can’t possibly be wrong. “Yeah.”

“You deserve to find what you’re looking for,” Em says, sincerely, dropping her chin to look up at him. “More than anyone.”

Lovett’s heart clenches.

Em’s eyes flick upwards, over his shoulder. “Jon’s waiting, so I’m going to leave you two. Just-” She stands, slowly, and squeezes his shoulder. “Jon needs you, but, I want you to make the best decision for you, okay?”

He nods, his throat dry, and turns to see Jon greet her with a short kiss and a hand spread on her stomach. Lovett’s chest aches, watching them. With want. With regret.

Jon slides into the chair Em had just vacated, none of the softness gone from his face. “So, I guess we have some things to talk about.”

Lovett nods and clears his throat. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

***

_September 2011_

“Lovett.” Jon wraps his arm around Lovett’s shoulders, pressing his lips to Lovett’s ear. His voice sounds sloppy and wet. “I’m going to miss you.”

Lovett laughs and pushes at his shoulder. “I’m moving half a block from your brother. I’m going to see you all the time.”

Jon groans. “It’s not the same.”

Lovett flattens his palm on Jon’s chest. “I promise I’ll still send you every draft of every word I write. And I equally promise to call you at all hours of the night, for writing advice, and other kinds of advice.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Lovett laughs, patting him gently, and pulling away. He grabs both their drinks and hands one to Jon. “See, you’re not going to miss me so much.”

Tommy snorts on his other other side. “Not at all.” He holds his drink out for Lovett and Jon to clink.

Lovett holds his out. Across the room, Dan catches his eye for the briefest of seconds, then looks away.

“I’m injured,” Lovett says. His voice shakes a little.

“You’ll be back, though, right? In January?” Jon pushes.

Lovett chuckles and says, sharper than he means to, “I already signed my contract, didn’t I?”

Jon makes a wounded noise. “Now I really am injured.”

Across the room, Dan slides out the front door.

Lovett forces his eyes back to Jon, who’s looking soft and sad, and Tommy, whose eyes are narrowed, following Lovett’s across the room. Lovett forces himself to look at Jon as he says, casually, “sorry, I- I see some people I like more, over there, so I’m gonna-”

Jon makes another incredulous noise as Lovett pushes past them; past the advance staff who raise their glasses “to Lovett, who survived”; past Cody who tries to grab his shoulder for “a round for my best bud, on me”; past Axe beating Emily in a ridiculous round of beer pong.

Lovett pushes open the side door and steps out. The Potomac roars in his ears. The moon illuminates Dan’s back, his sleeves rolled past his elbows and his shoulders bent inwards against the shadows of the cherry blossoms.

Lovett steps forward, his fingers trailing over Dan’s elbow. Dan turns his head. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

Lovett swallows. Dan’s eyes are as blue as the day Lovett met him, on the Congressional steps. “Of course I did.”

Dan shakes his head, dipping his chin and just stopping himself from dropping it all the way. “Are you ready?”

“No.” Lovett shakes his head, chuckling a little. “I have half-packed boxes all over my room.”

Dan laughs. “Figures.”

Lovett reaches up, pressing his fingers behind Dan’s ear, running through the bristles of his greying temples. “I could never be ready.”

“Why are you going, then?” Dan asks, his voice shaking.

Lovett doesn’t push away when Dan closes the distance between them. Dan tastes like salt and the worst of the mess’ fried Friday dinners and he smells like everything Lovett’s going to miss and like the only thing that could have, in another lifetime, kept him from going.

“Hey, Lovett,” Tommy calls, from the side door. “They’re about to cut a big cake with the First Amendment on it, so you might wanna get in here before Jon steals all the best words.”

Lovett drops onto his heels, his mouth wet and swollen. He rests his forehead on Dan’s shoulder, counting his breath, _one, two, three_ , before he steps back and whispers. “Because you didn’t ask me to stay.”

Dan swallows.

Lovett raises his voice, “I’m coming, Tommy,” and doesn't look back.

***

_August 2021_

“Canape?”

Lovett peers at the tray and reaches for a meatball on a stick and a piece of toast spread with cheese and cranberries. He's already had a dozen or so, but, he figures, it takes at least a couple dozen canapes to balance out the full bottle of champagne he's already polished off.

“Thanks,” Alyssa grins as she leans next to him and trades the meatball for another glass of champagne. “How thoughtful of you to think about me.”

Lovett frowns. “I wasn't, really,” but leans back with his champagne and cheese.

“That’s what you think.” Alyssa's eyes sparkle in the low lights, optimized for the huge, open, library of the digital future and not for an opening gala. She's wearing an extravagant jumpsuit and a pair of clogs that clap across the wooden floor as she walks. She taps them now as she leans against his shoulder and crosses her ankles. “Quite a show, huh?”

Lovett laughs, tugging at the edges of his bowtie. “I had to pull this out of the depths of my sock drawer.”

She laughs and hands him her champagne so that she can fix it. Her fingers brush against his chin and, when she's done, she leaves her palm on his chest. “Bowties suit you.”

“Fuck off, of course they do,” Lovett glares at her, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Alyssa laughs and taps his chest. Over her head, Lovett can see the rest of their family making the rounds. Tommy has Logan upside down, his small dress shoes kicking at Tommy's shoulders as he giggles. Cody's flushed with champagne, dancing around the room, mirroring POTUS’ movements, like he has been for years and, Lovett assumes, will continue to do for the rest of his career. As he reaches Dan and Jon, he fills both their glasses and ignores Emily's glare, leaning in to say something that has them all laughing.

Cody leaves and Dan squeezes Em’s shoulder. Lovett shifts, uncomfortably, as they both turn to look at him. Dan leans in to whisper in her ear and she smiles softly, turning her cheek for a kiss as he steps around her.

“If you want to leave,” Alyssa whispers, quietly, “do it now.”

Lovett takes a deep breath. “I'd never do that to you.”

He tears his eyes away from Dan to look into hers. They're soft and knowing and, fuck, Lovett had thought- Dan has never, in all their years together, let on-

“Alyssa,” Lovett says, hoarsely.

Alyssa's smile is small and sad. “You don't need to say anything.”

Lovett shakes his head. His world is spinning so fast it's rocking on its axis, loose and unsustainable. If he stays here, if he watches her watch him, his deepest secrets bright and shining and _there_ in the very tilt of her shoulders and the quirk of her lips, that axis is going to slip and his foundations are going to come crashing down around his ears.

He hands her his champagne glass, whispering, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” and turns on his heel without looking back.

He doesn't know which way he goes. The library is full of wide, open, glass-ceilinged rooms connected by tight, ill-lit corridors. He takes the first one, past the coat room, past a newfangled drinking fountain designed for those new plastic-less expandable water bottles, past the point where he can hear the sound of the band or the happy chatter or the tinkle of champagne glasses.

He pushes through the last door and then he's outside. Outside, where it's hot and humid and he reaches up, tugging at his bowtie and the buttons underneath. He can't breath. He can't think. He can't-

“Jon?”

Lovett turns, so fast that he almost slides onto the edge of the new, expensive dress shoes he'd ordered from Amazon without actually trying on. They pinch his toes but are loose in the heels and he's already dreading the blisters he'll have in the morning. If he makes it to the morning.

Dan's smiling at him. He's backlit against the _Obama Presidential Foundation_ sign, the lights gleaming off the crystal champagne glasses in his hands and sparkling off the silver of his cufflinks. They're the custom Sixers ones Lovett, Jon, and Tommy had gone in on for his 45th birthday. Lovett remembers picking them out. Lovett remembers wondering if he'd ever get to take them off Dan's wrists.

All he'd have to do is step forward. Lovett knows that Dan's tentative half-smile would bloom wider. Lovett knows how easy it would be, how Dan's hand would fit into the small of his back like it was meant to be there, how Dan's lips would feel against his, how'd they'd drown, together, as the years melted between them. Lovett knows he could quirk his head and Dan would come back with him, let Lovett open him up, cry out Lovett's name as if he didn't care if the whole world heard him. But then, in the morning, he'd pull the sheets to his hips and his knees to his chest and say “you go first, so no one will suspect” and Lovett's heart would sink.

Except, Lovett's heart is already buried deep, deep underground and it can't sink anymore.

Dan takes a tentative step forward to catch him, but Lovett rights himself, flattening his soles against the blistering tarmac and straightening his shoulders.

“I can't do this,” he says, louder than he meant to in the quiet of the night, but steadier than he'd hoped for.

Dan freezes.

“I can't do this,” Lovett repeats. 

“Lovett-

“I can't take the job.”

Dan lets his eyes slide closed. “You haven't fully heard me out yet.”

Lovett shakes his head, “I know, but, I can't let you. Because if you do, we're just going to fall again and-”

“Lovett, please,” Dan whispers. He eyelashes are wet and, when he blinks them open again, his eyes are as clear as the night sky. “Please, let me-”

“No,” Lovett whispers, taking a step back. “I can't do this again.” He swallows and, as the foundations start to crumble underneath him, he reaches for the last real, true thing he has and lays it bare. “I love you too much to watch you walk away again.”

Dan gasps, broken and wet. Crystal shatters against the ground.

Lovett doesn't look back as he flees into the night.


	3. Part III: 2018 & 2021

_May 2018_

Lovett's suitcase is heavy as he lugs it up three flights of stairs to Dan's extravagantly expensive one bedroom in the Mission. Pundit twists around his heels, anxious after a full day of flying. Or, a full day of sitting at Logan, then Denver, then, finally, Seattle, before he convinced Delta to fly him at least to SF if they couldn't quite get him to LA.

The door's already open as he struggles up the last few steps. "You could help," Lovett accuses.

Dan laughs. His feet are bare and he's wearing a pair of loose, blue khaki shorts under one of the many basketball shirts he owns and still has yet to explain to Lovett. "I'm letting you stay, isn't that help enough?" But he squats down, the muscles in his calves pulling tight, to rub between Pundit's ears. "Hi Pundo. Welcome to the much superior California city."

Lovett scoffs. "You live on a town of hills without a good szechuan place in sight. And it rains all the time. How all your cars don't slide straight downhill-? It's a physics miracle."

"I think they did an episode of Mythbusters on it," Dan shrugs, standing up and reaching for Pundit's leash. "And remind me, why are you here again? Oh, right, earthquake warnings."

"Global warming," Lovett grumbles, barely catching the edge of Dan's door from closing as he pushes his suitcase inside. "Our planet is fucked for the children you're obviously watching Mythbusters to prepare for."

Dan shrugs. "I'm mostly unemployed. I've scraped the bottom of the Netflix barrel."

"Better, I guess, then a, what?, thirteenth rewatch of The OC."

Dan shrugs, easily, as he crosses to his fridge. "Something like that. Beer?"

"Thirteen is an unlucky number, I'd be careful if I were you," Lovett warns. "Something stronger, if you have it. What a day."

He drops his suitcase and digs through it for the sweatpants and FotP shirt he'd brought for hotel rooms. He heads down Dan's hallway, only familiar from the short tour they'd all gotten before their live show in Oakland a year or two ago. He finds the bathroom easily enough, though, and when he comes out again, his hair wet and his feet bare, too, Dan has a brightly colored drink poured in front of Lovett's place on the only couch.

"Some might say it's good manners to ask before using someone's shower," Dan muses. He twists his fingers into Pundit's fur and takes a long sip of his drink.

"You're not someone," Lovett scoffs. Dan blinks, as bright and blue as they are in Lovett's dreams, and Lovett reaches for his drink. "Rum?"

"I'm out of gin," Dan shrugs, apologetically. "You and Favs are the only ones I know who drink it."

Lovett's mouth is dry. He takes a sip from his glass and pulls his legs up beside him. He rubs at his sore ankle with his thumb. "Thanks, for having me and Pundit. We could have stayed out at the airport, but, she's been in hotels for 9 days and I didn't wanna make her stay in another."

"It's not a problem. I'd be madder if you hadn't called me," Dan tells him. He reaches out and touches Lovett's wrist, his fingers warm and soft. "9 is a lot of days."

Lovett shrugs. He takes another sip of his drink - pineapple - and doesn't meet Dan's eyes. "Gotta give the fans what they want. Lovett or Leave It is a hit, or haven't you heard."

"A juggernaut," Dan agrees. He rubs the ridge of his thumb over Lovett's achilles tendon.

Lovett looks up. His eyes feel muddy as they reach Dan's. "We _have_ to win this election."

"I know."

"If I even get 10 people to vote a show, it's worth a little exhaustion."

"I know."

"We _have_ to win," Lovett repeats.

Dan scoots closer. Lovett can feel the heat of his thighs and the warm pressure of his hand on Lovett's thigh. "You're doing more than your part." Dan turns his hand, palm up. "Come to bed?"

Lovett hesitates, glancing down at Pundit between them. She has her head on her paws, her eyes already closed. Dan is strong and close and so much more, even, than the man in Lovett's memories.

He nods, meaning just to sleep, meaning to forget the world, for just a little while, meaning to get a little of the rest he's been desperate for since election day.

When Dan rolls over, though, in the sliver of moonlight streaming through his blinds, Lovett raises his head for a kiss. When Dan slides a hand, slow and gentle, into Lovett's sweats, Lovett runs his hands under Dan's t-shirt, his body soft and warm and healthy for the first time since Lovett's known him. When Dan twists his wrist just right, Lovett grasps onto his bicep, too tight and too strong, and gasps Dan's name into the early morning light.

Dan rolls onto his back, throwing his arm over his eyes and struggling to breath. "Fuck, Jon, it's been too long."

Lovett bites his lip, then slides out of bed to let Pundit in. She curls between their knees, and Lovett reaches down to scratch her head. "I'm so tired," he whispers, into the night.

Dan's fingers squeeze the back of his neck. He leans forward to kiss behind Lovett's ear. "I've missed you."

Lovett nods, and drops his head to Dan’s shoulder. He sleeps the best night of sleep he’s had in ages.

***

_August 2021_

“No, no,” Ella Rhodes leans over Lovett’s shoulder to point at the anthropomorphized hamburger on his phone. She wraps her fingers around his, tipping his phone just right. “Like this.”

Lovett blinks at his phone, his eyes still sleep-crusted and slitted. “And I’m supposed to be helping him run _away_ from the cow?” He confirms, trying to focus on her rather than on holding his chest together over the empty space where his heart used to be, until last night, until he left it on the pavement at Dan’s feet.

She nods, rolling her eyes with all the exasperation of a seven-year-old. “The cow’s not going to eat the hamburger, Uncle Lo. That would be cannibalism.”

Lovett laughs and glances up, catching Ben’s eyes across the breakfast table. “Your daughter’s teaching me the finer points of cannibalism.”

Ben sighs into his coffee. “She watched a documentary. It took a bit of a, ahh, left turn towards the end.”

“You killed the hamburger,” Ella says, exasperated.

Lovett looks back at her as she crosses her arms over her chest. She’s still in her pajamas, dotted with small panda doodles. He laughs, cupping the back of her messy pigtails. “Sorry,” he tells her as he hands over his phone, “why don't you show me?”

She looks at him, skeptically, but does take his phone and open the app. She narrates as she plays, so intent on the game, and Lovett winks up at her dad even as he's grateful for the distraction from last night's replay running over and over again across the insides of his eyelids. 

“This game,” Lovett muses as he focuses back on Ella, “is awfully violent.”

Ella’s eyes narrow. “You fight zombies all the time.”

“That is true,” Lovett hums, wishing that he hadn’t spent his last weekend babysitting teaching her how to play the latest _Left 4 Dead_. “But zombies are already dead, so that doesn’t count.”

She tilts her head thoughtfully, before looking across the table for confirmation. “Dad?”

Ben laughs. “Uncle Lo is really the expert on this one, sweetheart. Whatever he says, goes.”

She looks at Lovett, skeptically.

Ben reaches across the table and taps her wrist. “You should be focusing on breakfast, anyway. Give Lovett his phone back.”

She glares at Lovett as she closes the game and slaps it into his palm. “Why does he get to have it?”

“Because Uncle Lo is an adult-”

Alyssa snorts.

“Kinda,” Ben corrects. “He can make his own decisions to rot his brain, anyway. Yours is still my responsibility.”

“Ew,” Lovett wrinkles his nose.

“Ew, what?” Jon asks, as he leans over the chair next to Lovett's, two styrofoam cups in his hands.

“Ew, Ben's never allowed to yell at me about zombie games again,” Lovett explains, unhelpfully.

Jon opens his mouth to ask, but Alyssa shakes her head and Jon changes tactics. He holds out a cup to Lovett and jerks his chin. “Walk with me?”

Lovett nods, feeling like his chest should be pounding but instead feeling nothing but inevitability as he pushes his chair back and takes the cup. “Did you put cream and sugar in here?”

Jon nods. “Just the way you like it.”

“Thanks.” Lovett curls his fingers around it, as if he needs more heat than the sun already beating down on his neck as they head out of the hotel.

Jon smiles ruefully. “Least I could do.”

Lovett snorts. “This doesn't make us even. You owe me a lot more coffees.”

Jon nods. “A steady stream of Starbucks, I promise. You're gonna need them if you're running campaign hours again.” He drums his fingers against his cup, his eyes dropping even under his sunglasses. “Assuming-?”

Lovett sighs. “How can I say no when you've asked me so nicely?” He jokes. Maybe jokes. Jokes resignedly? He really doesn't know anymore.

Jon flinches and waits until they've crossed the road, before he looks down at his flip-flops and says, as sincerely as he ever has, “I really am sorry.”

“Yeah.” Lovett sighs. He takes a sip of coffee and steers them towards the shoreline, where he can feel the breeze off of Lake Michigan. “I thought-”

Lovett remembers all the early moments of Crooked. He remembers how much less grey Jon was, when they leaned against Lovett's bumper and decided to make hope-ade out of hopelessness. He remembers how defiant Tommy had been, strolling into the WeHo Bank of America with a $100 bill and a metaphor about Ben Franklin that hadn't ever really gelled. Lovett remembers the night they'd signed their first lease, three offices ago now, when he'd been drowning in all the responsibilities of these employees and these listeners and this country that was looking to him, as if he was the canary in the Trump mine.

Lovett remembers knowing, with the bright clarity that has only come to him a few times in his life, that he was only treading water because Jon and Tommy were, too.

Lovett swallows as he steps gingerly onto the rocky coast, “I thought we were in this together.”

“Lovett.”

Lovett shrugs as he chooses a good looking rock - smooth and steady and metaphoric - in the shade and sits, cross-legged on it. “What a chump I am, huh?”

Jon makes a pained noise. “Lovett-”

Lovett shields his eyes against the sun as he looks up at Jon. He looks regal - _senatorial_ , Lovett's mind supplies - in his khaki shorts and button-up. Lovett shakes his head. “Don't answer that.”

“Lovett,” Jon says, for a third time, and scrambles to sit next to him on the rocks. “You're not a chump.”

Lovett puts down his empty cup and, needing something to do with his hands, pulls his knees to his chest. 

“I was so scared,” Jon says, quietly, without looking away from him.

Lovett snorts into his knees. “That's stupid. You were born to do this.”

Jon flushes and smiles, as if, ridiculously, Lovett can still get to him. Jon bites his lip. “I was scared I wasn't making the right choice. Still am.”

Lovett turns his head, so his cheek rests on his kneecaps. “You'll never know until you try.”

“But-” Jon shakes his head, but doesn't look away. “But what if I'm breaking the best thing we'll ever have so that I can go on some ego-based wild goose chase?”

“An ego chase?” Lovett offers.

Jon laughs weakly.

“You're not breaking it,” Lovett says, surprising himself, a little, with how much he actually believes it. He straightens his back and leans back on his hands. “You're not breaking it. We've built something to last, long after we're gone. We have a wonderful team of women who are, frankly, a lot smarter than us and a slate of podcasts that are equally a lot more interesting.”

Jon reaches out to squeeze Lovett's wrist. “I've never been so proud of anything in my life.”

“Don't tell the baby that,” Lovett tries to quip. He doesn't pull his hand away.

Jon rolls his eyes. “And there's no one I'd rather have built it with. Although I'm willing to reassess that opinion.”

Lovett chuckles. “Maybe one of those podcasts will even let you on as a guest, Senate Candidate Favreau.”

Jon smiles, a sparkling, real, arresting thing.

Lovett hasn't seen it in months. He hadn't realized how much he's missed it.

“Yeah?” Jon asks.

“Well,” Lovett takes a deep breath and, for the third time in his life, jumps off a cliff with Jon at his side. “As your Communications Director, I might have a couple strings I can pull.”

Jon's smile widens even further. “Yeah?”

The sun sparkles off the lake. Jon's fingers are warm on his skin. Lovett's body already aches with exhaustion, just thinking about the campaign, but he's never found a better way to bury the shards of his broken heart than in feeling useful and this, this campaign, _is_ good. For California, for the country, for Jon.

Lovett swallows. “Yeah.”

***

_August 2018_

“To Tommy and Hanna.” 

Lovett raises his glass, obediently, and only takes half a sip as he leans back against the wall of the barn. The room is filled with all of Tommy and Hanna’s closest people, buzzed on rosé and flushed with good humor. Lovett can feel it in his cheeks, the flush of his skin and the soreness in his muscles.

He’s already done the rounds - a rendition of the _Time Warp_ with Emily and a _We Didn’t Start the Fire_ sing-off with Taylor and a memorable slow dance to Lady Gaga’s rendition of _Your Song_ with Lucca’s paws around his neck - and he’s happy to fade into the background as the clock slips past midnight.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. _meet me outside._

Lovett rolls his eyes.

It buzzes again. _bring wine._

He looks up, twisting the top corner of his phone between his fingers, as he looks around him. Ben and Ann have their hands clasped around Ella’s bright, smiling face and floral party dress. Em has long passed buzzed and is wearing a silver princess crown, swaying with her chin on Hanna’s shoulder as Jon watches on. Cody has Kristen on one arm and Alyssa on the other, twirling them both as they laugh against each other.

Jon catches his eye over the sea of people, shaking his head with exasperated fondness, expecting Lovett to join in on the joke. Lovett’s chest is aching, though, and his phone is warm in his palm.

Jon frowns a little and nods onto the dance floor next to him. Lovett shakes his head and, without entirely making sure that Jon’s not watching, slips away to find his person.

“I got a bottle of the rosé,” Lovett says, by way of announcing his presence. He trips over an aesthetically-placed log, and Dan catches the bottle in one hand and Lovett’s elbow in the other. “It’s gonna give us terrible sugar headaches in the morning, but, it was the easiest to pawn off the bartender.”

Dan chuckles. “Rosé will do just fine.” He squeezes Lovett’s elbow, then takes the bottle and fills both their glasses.

There’s a small bonfire on the side of the reception barn meant, Lovett figures, for early morning smores and good luck cigars. It’s nowhere near late enough, though, and Dan’s alone, his features playing in the fire light. Lovett hasn’t seen him, in person, since his LA book talk in June and Lovett hasn’t been alone with him since that early May morning when Dan had kissed him, soft and sweet and full of all the promises he never actually makes.

Dan looks good. Fresh off a number one NY Times bestseller and reinvigorated by the speed and adrenaline of campaign season. Lovett’s never quite understood how he does that, how Dan has always lived for the fear and the anxiety, fed off of it, used it to fuel one of the best minds the Party has. 

For Lovett, campaigns have always been a necessary evil that feed the political need that lives in his bones. An obsession that wars with his better angels and, more often than not, wins out. A career path that chose him as much as he chose it, a path that has stood between him and all the things he would choose, if he had any actual say in the matter. A path that led him to Dan but has, otherwise, erected an unscalable wall between them.

Dan holds out Lovett’s glass. “To Tommy and Hanna, who have finally figured it out.”

Lovett clinks their glasses together and takes a long sip. It slides down his throat and makes him bold, or reckless, or both. “Did you ever think we’d be here?”

“At Tommy’s wedding?” Dan snorts. “After Katie, I had my doubts.”

Lovett’s heart clenches and his spine feels cold. “Not what I meant.”

Dan’s smile falters. “I know.” He puts his glass down on one of the stumps Lovett tripped over and holds out his hand. “Dance with me.”

“Dan-”

Dan shakes his head. “There’s no one here. Can we pretend, just for a little while?”

Lovett closes his eyes and tips back his drink, before stepping forward and putting it next to Dan’s. “Pretend, huh?” He asks, as he steps into the circle of Dan’s arms.

Dan’s neck is smooth under Lovett’s fingertips, his breath warm on Lovett’s ear, his dick half-hard where their hips are pressed together. From the crack in the barn door, Lovett can hear the song click over, and he slides his fingers along Dan’s, leading them into a slow, practiced rhythm, perfected over innumerable White House functions.

He rests his head on Dan’s shoulder. If he lets his eyes slide shut, he can imagine them dancing, just like this, in the middle of that crowd. He can feel Ben’s shoulder against his and he can hear the high peels of Alyssa’s laughter and he can see Jon smiling so bright at him. He can feel Dan’s hand, possessive on his back, his fingers spread wide as he claims Lovett as his, in front of everyone they know and care about. He can feel his own heart ease and soften, letting Dan in, giving back everything Dan is giving him, meeting him, step for step, on the edge of the cliff they’ve never quite managed to jump off of, together.

When he opens his eyes, though, there’s just the bonfire and the vineyards stretching all around him. There’s the soft, muffled sounds of laughter barely reaching them. There’s Dan’s mouth, warm and insistent, against his.

“I’ve got a room, upstairs,” Dan whispers.

Lovett laughs against his lips. “So do I.” But he takes the hand Dan holds out and lets himself be pulled up and away, into the world of pretend, just for tonight.

***

_August 2021_

Lovett’s halfway through an argument on Jon’s slogan - “no, Jon, you cannot just use _Yes We Still Can_ because, one, it’s been fifteen years since that was effective and, two, doesn’t Dan have it copyrighted?” - when his phone buzzes where it’s resting on the rock next to him.

Jon looks down at it, shaking his head like it’s roused him from the depths of the campaign stupor they’ve fallen into. “What time is it?” He asks, guiltily, as he pulls his own phone out of his pocket and flinches at the time.

“I don’t know,” Lovett shrugs as he idly turns his phone over. It’s warm from the sun and the text, he assumes, is from his agent, who he still hasn’t answered since Friday night.

She’s going to kill him when he turns down the offer. He should offer to let her sell the script, a bone for all her hard work over the past few months with, as it turns out, no hope of a commision for her trouble.

It’s not his agent.

Lovett’s heart comes rushing back into his chest as he sees Dan’s icon - a ridiculous photo Elijah had taken in the earliest days of Crooked, at a team retreat when Dan had given a talk in the Big Bear woods surrounded by insects and at least six dogs - next to a new text message. Lovett rubs at his chest, pressing tightly with his fist against the ache.

He’d liked, better, the numbness of the last twelve hours.

_meet me @ 5476 Kenwood at 1P_

_don’t be late_

Lovett swallows. He’d kind of been hoping to get out of Chicago without having to talk to Dan again. He’d been hoping that he’d have a few weeks to go home, lick his wounds in peace while his heart learned to beat again now that his darkest, most ridiculous, secret hope for the future was finally off the table for good.

He thumbs the edge of his phone, hovering over the reply button. He could say no. He _should_ say no. He has an early flight in the morning. Tommy needs him to babysit Logan. Emily’s gone into sudden and easily-disproved labor.

Jon chuckles at his own phone, his smile soft and warm, the new smile, the one that’s uniquely saved for the baby. “The baby’s kicking a lot this morning,” he explains, when he glances up to see Lovett watching him. “And is apparently craving something spicy. There’s some Indian restaurant on 57th Street that Cody’s recommending? I don’t really know, but, I have a pin.”

Lovett looks back down at his phone. “Sounds good,” he says, pocketing his phone without replying.

Jon rises with a groan, his knees cracking, and wipes dirt off his ass. Lovett laughs and reaches for a couple of pebbles that have stuck to the flaps of his pockets.

“First thing we’re doing,” Lovett promises, “is hiring a stylist.”

“Fuck off I have great style,” Jon says, automatically. Then his shoulders slump. “Fine, whatever, but I’m not wearing TV makeup all the time.”

“You’ll wear whatever the stylist says you’ll wear.” Lovett narrows his eyes. “What happened to you’ll do anything I say if I’ll take the job?”

“That was not the deal,” Jon laughs. “And how am I going to keep stage makeup fresh when I’m crying a dozen times a day.”

Lovett drops his head back. It stretches his chest muscles over his rapidly beating heart and he rolls his neck, leaning into the pain. “This is going to be the worst campaign.”

Jon laughs, shoving his hands into his front pockets and curling his shoulders inwards. He looks settled, the frantic kinetic energy of the last six months gone from his body.

Lovett lifts his head and his chest pulls and tightens. His phone is burning in his pocket and he picks up his pace as if, maybe, he could walk fast enough to escape it. 

Jon keeps pace, his longer strides matching Lovett’s. The further they get from Lake Michigan, the warmer it gets, and Lovett is breathing heavily by the time they cross Stony Island and head up to 57th. His shirt is sticking to his back and his knees are shaking, from the heat or the walking or the decisions he's made or hasn't made, he's not sure, but by the time they get to the restaurant he's wrung out and struggling to wrap up his humidity-based rant.

Despite their pace, they're the last ones to arrive. Lovett can see them all through the window, pushing tables together to make room. Emily's hands are on her hips, guiding the process, as Ben and Cody and Ella gainfully push and pull until the tables are even and large enough. 

“Come on,” Jon says, wiping at his brow as he steps around Lovett, “they've gotta have some air conditioning in there.”

Lovett nods, absently, and follows. It's habitual, following Jon, and if Jon asked him to jump off a cliff, Lovett would ask 'how high’ and not regret it, even as he lay on his back on the ground. Except, Jon would never ask him to jump, because Jon is smart and methodical and thinks things through before he asks too much from those he loves.

Dan has never had to ask Lovett to jump, because Lovett has always done it for him, without waiting or watching or, in most cases, wanting Dan to follow.

But maybe, just maybe, Dan is asking now.

Lovett pulls out his phone with shaking hands and looks from it to the long table as Jon slides in next to Hanna and Logan, greeting them with cheek kisses and the clown expression that never fails to make Logan laugh. Cody catches his eye and pats the chair left between him and Alyssa and Lovett takes a step forward, almost aborts when Alyssa turns around, her face falling with disappointment as she sees him.

Lovett finishes crossing the room, wrapping his knuckles, white and shaking, against the back of his chair. He wants to sit down. He wants Ella to actually teach him the cow game and he wants to argue slogans with Cody and he wants to tell a joke that puts the whole table in stitches. He wants this to be enough, this proof of the life he's led and the clear, easy future ahead of him. He wants to want it.

He squeezes Alyssa's shoulder and drops his voice. “Make my apologies? There's, ahh, someplace I've gotta be.”

Her mouth blooms into the brightest smile. She squeezes his hand. “Go.”

Lovett nods, hiding his own, impossibly hopefully smile and flushed cheeks, as he backs surreptitiously out of the restaurant.

Then he starts to run.

***

_October 2018_

“That could have gone worse,” Tommy shrugs. His phone is still perched against the salt shaker, playing their first live HBO special on mute.

The table is covered in half-empty wine glasses and folded dirty napkins and the remnants of the tiramisus they’d all shared, detritus of their post-show family dinner. Tanya and Elijah have retreated with their families, though, and Lovett grabs Emily’s abandoned wine glass and slides into Travis’ empty seat next to Dan.

Jon stretches out across from him, spreading his legs wide under the table and forcing Lovett to pull his legs up and under his hips. Jon sighs contentedly. “Could have gone a lot worse.”

“We only swore, what?, a dozen or so times?” Dan chuckles.

“It’s HBO,” Lovett scoffs. “Swearing and dragons are their entire brand.”

Dan crosses his legs, leaning just an inch closer to Lovett, so that his thigh presses into Lovett’s bent knee. “I don’t know what our parents will make of that argument.”

“Their fault for tagging along,” Lovett shrugs, leaning forward across the table and holding out his glass. “One down, three to go.”

“Three weeks,” Tommy says, solemnly, “three weeks and we find out if everything we've been doing has worked.”

Lovett freezes. Under the table, Dan squeezes his knee. “Nothing like a little pressure,” he tries to joke as he presses into Dan's fingers.

“You've always worked best under pressure,” Jon tells him, “or, at least, pressure has gotten you to put on some pants.”

“The new Democratic messaging: Donald Trump is President, Put on Some Damn Pants.”

Dan laughs. “Pithy. Certainly better than The Better Deal.”

Jon frowns, his glass halfway to his mouth. “Shouldn't it be 'take off some damn pants’? That feels more progressive.”

Lovett laughs, tilting forward with the surprise of it. Dan's hand slides up his thigh with the movement.

Tommy shakes his head and pushes his chair away from the table, dropping his napkin. “On that note, I’m going to head up to my room.”

Jon down his glass quickly, then pushes his chair back, with much less grace. “I’ll come with you.”

“The bus leaves at 9am sharp,” Lovett calls after them. “We have flights to catch, places to be, pods to record.”

Jon opens his hands, palms up, “right back at you,” and turns to go.

Lovett twists back to look at Dan. “They have little faith. Also, they stuck us with the bill.”

Dan scoots his chair impossibly closer, pushing his thigh under Lovett’s knee. “It’s okay, I have a company credit card.”

“That’s good.” Lovett’s heart beats loudly in his chest as he leans his elbow against the table. “Because I dropped mine down a crack in the sidewalk.”

Dan laughs.

“Seriously,” Lovett insists. “It’s been a day.”

“It has.” Dan swirls the last of his wine and slides it onto the table between them. “Do you want another drink?”

Dan is inches from him, a twist to his mouth and- Lovett twitches in his joggers. It’s been almost two months since the last time he’d seen Dan, naked and breathless, spread out on the expensive sheets at Tommy’s wedding vineyard, and he’s spent this past week alone in the Crooked offices wondering, hoping, wanting to end up in exactly this position.

Lovett shakes his head, reaching out to run his fingers, lightly, over Dan’s wrist. “I want you to get the check.”

Dan swallows. Lovett tracks the movement with his eyes.

He doesn’t move his fingers until the waiter is there, wishing them a good night, with a wink and a “your show was great tonight,” and Lovett takes just enough time to wonder if he’d been watching it play, muted and on Tommy’s tiny iPhone screen, over their shoulders. 

Then Dan is tugging at Lovett’s elbow, pulling him into the elevator and pushing him up against the closed metal doors. It’s cold on his back, in contrast to the heat radiating off of Dan’s thighs, pressed up and tight between his legs. In contrast to the warmth of Dan’s breath, smelling of wine and tasting of promise as he slides his tongue between Lovett’s lips. In contrast to the feel of Dan’s chest, stronger than it was even a few weeks ago, HBO-ready under the black t-shirt he changed into backstage.

The elevator bings and the doors slide open. Dan catches him, hand large and steady on his back, before he can fall through. He does stumble, though, laughing as he reaches up to spread his fingers on Dan’s jaw. “My knight in shining armor.”

“Your knight in a grubby zip-up and worn jeans, maybe,” Dan chuckles, walking him, backwards, down the hallway.

Lovett pulls him down for a kiss, “even better,” and he can feel the way Dan grins against him.

And then Dan is gone - his mouth, his hand, his breath - and Lovett trips a little, righting himself with a hand against the hideous hotel wallpaper. He turns, slowly, cold sliding down his spine and into the sweat-soaked places behind his knees and in the crooks of his elbows, as he catches sight of Jon, knocking on Lovett’s door.

“Oh,” Jon turns and says, light and breezy, and Lovett can’t tell if he’s forced that casual smile onto his face or not. “I was just coming to- Emily forgot her phone cable and she said she’s been borrowing yours and-”

Lovett nods and pulls out his room key. He can feel Dan behind him, his arms crossed over his chest and the muscles in his thighs tense. He can’t be more than a foot away, but Lovett shivers in the breeze rushing through the canyon between them.

Lovett digs through the mess that is his room and holds up the phone charger. “Tell her she can keep it, for the next leg. But she better not lose it, I won’t be able to help her out next time.”

Jon clutches it close to his chest, like it’s precious or like, maybe, he’s desperate for a lifeline. “Thanks.” He glances at Dan, who’s standing just inside the door, then back at Lovett. “Thanks, I’ll, ahh, tell her.”

Lovett nods. “You do that.”

Jon takes a stilted step towards the door. “9 am?”

Lovett nods again. His head feels too big for his neck, and he can’t seem to stop. “On the dot.”

Jon pauses, and for one, brief, terrifying moment, Lovett thinks he’s going to stop, say some of the words that have been hanging in the space between Dan and Lovett for way over a decade, push them to do something, say something, explain whatever the fuck this is they keep trying, and failing, to do.

But then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

Lovett glances away, towards the unmade bed he had hoped Dan would make the next morning. His knuckles are white on the edge of the desk chair. “Say it.”

Dan lets out a breath large enough to fill the space between them. He slides onto the edge of the closest bed, his weight collapsing onto it and folding inwards. “Say what?”

Lovett narrows his eyes. His voice drips with resentment as he adopts his worst impression of Dan’s worst words. “We have to be more careful. We’re important members of the Democratic Party, now, and people recognize us. If we’re going to keep doing this-”

Dan scoffs. “Doing _this_. And what, exactly, is this?”

“This.” Lovett motions between their chests. “This dance we always do, you and me.”

“This,” Dan shakes his head. His eyes are dark and unreadable as he catches Lovett’s in the bright, artificial overhead lights. “Is two fucks over the past six months. Maybe, what?, a couple more between now and the midterms. Then what? What happens next?”

Lovett shrugs, wrapping his arms across his chest. He wants- He doesn’t even know what he wants anymore, but he knows he doesn’t want Dan to leave and he knows his feet are so, so tired from dancing. “I don’t know.”

Dan’s eyes flash, and he looks away again. “This isn’t enough.”

Lovett’s arms goosebump. “ _This_ is all you’re willing to give me.”

“Because _this_ is all you’re willing to accept from me.” Dan sighs, pressing his hands into his thighs and standing. “I’m going to go back to my room.”

He takes a step forward, leaning down to press a kiss to Lovett’s temple. It’s warm and soft. It feels like a confession. It feels like a goodbye.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Dan whispers, then turns on his heels. The door slicks open and closed, quiet on its hinges.

Lovett starts to shake.

***

_August 2021_

Lovett sees Dan first. He’s sitting on the steps of a townhouse on Kenwood. His shoulders are slumped, his elbows on his knees and his head bent so that his sunglasses are sliding down his nose. 

Then he sees the For Sale sign and his chest thumps. He stops jogging and pulls at the hem of his shirt as he leans against it. “It’s too fucking hot to be sitting around out here.”

Dan’s head snaps up, surprise and hope warring across his face as he looks at Lovett. “You’re late.”

“Fashionably.” Lovett shrugs. “And you interrupted lunch, so, I really hope you have a plan to feed me.”

Dan holds up a bag of tacos dripping with grease. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Debatable.”

“Ahh, is this him?” The real estate agent - she’s dressed in a purple skirt suit and two inch heels in the middle of Hyde Park on a humid Sunday in August, she must be the real estate agent - appears in the doorway. “You’re late.”

Lovett opens his mouth and frowns. “Who is ‘him’?”

“Yeah,” Dan answers, ignoring him and using his hands on his knees to propel himself upright. “We still have a few minutes, if you’d show us around?”

She nods her head, a little jerkily, and Dan takes the stairs two at a time to meet her.

“Wait.” Lovett’s frowns deepens. “What are we-?”

“I’m done waiting,” Dan calls as he pauses in the doorway, then, true to word, disappears inside without him.

Lovett stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking between the For Sale sign and the spot where Dan had disappeared. His heart beats, traitorously, against his chest and for one, ridiculous moment, Lovett’s possible future stretches out in front of him again. This townhouse, just a few blocks from the Obama Library, with both their names on the mailbox out front. Two little girls in messy pigtails racing each other up the front steps, their laughter cutting through the cold of Chicago winters. Dan’s eyes, as blue as the cloudless sky, making waves in the community with sincerity and warmth but never as bright a color as they are when they catch Lovett’s across a crowded community center.

Lovett pushes the images deep, deep underground to rest next to his battered heart and jogs up the stairs.

It’s a fine house. The real estate agent introduces herself as “Cindy, with a C” and says things like “this room could use a new coat of paint” and “it’s not in the best school district, but there are a lot of charter options nearby” and “you’re not going to find something with more space in the neighborhood.”

Dan nods along and makes enthusiastic noises about possible ways to finish the unfinished basement and make the bottom bedroom into an office. When Lovett meets the paint comments with muttered “and the floor could use a buff,” he shoves the bag of tacos into Lovett’s chest and orders, “eat.”

Lovett peels back a taco, already dripping with sauce and melted cheese, and uses the wrapper to catch the extras. “Fuck where’s this from?”

Dan smirks as they climb the stairs to the top floor. “There’s a hole in the wall a block away. It’s open at least until 2 am, every night.”

Lovett moans a little and blames the taco for saying, “you say such sweet things to me,” before he can stop himself.

Dan only shows that he heard in the stiffness of his back.

When they stop in the master bedroom, though, to look out the window onto Nichols Park, Dan’s voice is shaking as he says, quietly, “I really didn’t think you were going to come.”

The grass is yellowing with late summer and a gaggle of children are chasing each other in circles around the swing set. Lovett puts the traitorous taco back into the bag and wipes his own shaking fingers on a napkin. “I wasn’t going to.”

“I deserve that,” Dan chuckles, reaching abortively out, his own hands shaking. “I’m glad you did.”

“So,” Cindy says, loudly, from the doorway. “What do you think?”

Dan looks at Lovett, his eyes warm and hopeful and Lovett can’t breath as the walls close in around him. He shoves his hands into his front pockets, curling his shoulders in, trying to make himself small enough to fit into the space that’s left. “It seems a little big for one person.”

“Good thing it’s not meant for one, then,” Dans says, matter-of-factly, like his words don’t fizzle down Lovett’s spine like an electric shock.

Cindy clears her throat, tapping her long nails against the door jamb, and Lovett’s never been so grateful for an interruption. “I see you two have a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you to it, but remember, you only have a couple more days to close.”

Lovett barely manages to wait until they’re outside again, Cindy locking the door behind them, before he rounds on Dan. “You _put a deposit_ down?”

Dan shrugs. “My turn to roll the dice.”

“Dan-”

“If we’re going to do this, can we at least do it while we walk?” Dan asks, plaintively. “We have one more appointment to get to.”

“Dan,” Lovett tries, again, but Dan is already walking, slow and steady up Kenwood, with the swingsets to his right and the wide boulevard to his left. Lovett falls into step beside him, out of habit more than anything, his mind whirring as he tries to process.

Dan glances sideways at him. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth yesterday.”

Lovett shakes his head. “What else is new?”

“When POTUS came to me six months ago, I _was_ tired and I _did_ realize that I needed to make some changes if I ever have a hope of getting the life I’ve wanted for so long,” Dan continues, undeterred, as he turns them onto 56th Street, towards Washington Park.

Lovett sighs, deeply, because, if nothing else, “you deserve to be happy.”

Dan snorts. “Let me finish before you say that.”

Lovett waves his hand for Dan to go ahead.

Dan pulls his hands out of his pockets, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as he’s quiet for a block, then a second, before he takes a deep breath and asks, “did you mean what you said last night?”

Lovett’s heart pounds so wildly that he’s worried it’s trying to throw itself out of his chest, again. He tugs at the strings around his ribs and doesn’t let go. “Which part?”

“Any of it,” Dan’s voice drops, barely loud enough to be heard over the light Sunday traffic. “All of it.”

Lovett risks looking up into Dan’s eyes and, even behind his sunglasses, they take Lovett’s breath away. His heart leaps. Traitor.

Dan stops, reaching out to wrap his fingers around Lovett’s wrist. They’re warm and shaking and Lovett can feel Dan’s heartbeat in his fingertips, as loud and as fast as his own. “I’ve been in love with you since you ran into me on the Capitol steps four lifetimes ago.”

“You ran into me,” Lovett corrects, out of sheer rote.

Dan snorts.

“I don’t think,” Lovett says, quietly, his entire body aching, “that love has ever been the problem between us.”

Dan laughs in disbelief. “How can you-? Jon.” His voice is desperate, reedy. “I never knew. I was never sure. You never _said_.”

“How could I?” Lovett wets his lips, his words pulsing with all the things that were never said, that never could be said, between them. “How could you have heard me, through the door of that damn closet you've locked yourself in?”

“I was so terrified-”

Lovett scoffs and Dan slides his hand down Lovett's wrist to press their palms together, shaking and sweaty.

“I was terrified that I'd come out and you wouldn't be waiting for me on the other side.”

Lovett's world tilts and, as he falls, he loses his hold on the strings holding his chest together. “I would have been. I am. I always have been.”

Dan takes a step forward, so their toes are touching. “It’s always been you. Since day one, it's been you. You're worth _everything_ to me.”

“Dan,” Lovett chokes out, but that's all he manages before Dan's lips are on his. He tastes like salt and the bitter tang of fear as it melts between them. His hand is tight in Lovett's and Lovett lets himself believe, if only for this moment, that Dan will never let go. That Dan will do this, that Dan will claim him this publicly. 

Lovett's acutely aware of the sounds of the world around them - the car parallel parking across the street, the couple walking their dog past where they’re standing, the restaurant on the corner with a lunch line stretching onto the sidewalk - and his attention doesn't narrow to Dan until he pulls back.

Dan, who Lovett has loved since he was 24 years old, since long before he was old enough to understand just how dangerous that was.

Dan, who’s spent the last six months planning a life for them without ever really believing Lovett would join him. Who found a townhouse, big enough for both of them, big enough for more, with peeling walls and an open floor plan and just enough space for Lovett to make their own.

Dan, who won’t let him pull away as they close in on the Obama Presidential Center. Who squeezes Lovett’s hand tighter and leads him up the stairs and through the double glass doors.

Dan, who still doesn’t pull away when the security guard greets them, “Good afternoon, Mr. Pfeiffer,” with a warm smile.

“Dan,” Lovett hisses, trying to peel their fingers apart as they walk down the mostly-deserted Sunday hallway, “if you don’t want people to-.”

“You’re ruining my grand romantic gesture,” Dan tells him, matter of factly, and squeezes tighter. “So, maybe stop.”

Lovett opens his mouth - to reject the gesture or twist it into a joke that will make it more palatable to accept, he’s not sure - but then Dan’s pulling up short in front of a large glass door. The sign says “Barack Obama, 44th POTUS” and Lovett stops, his palm going cold with sweat against Dan’s.

Dan squeezes Lovett’s hand as he pushes open the door. “Hello, Mr. President. This still a good time?”

POTUS looks up from the book on his desk and stands with a smile. “Dan, Lovett yes, yes, come in.” His eyes skim over their hands, then up to Lovett’s face.

“Hi, Mr. President. Thanks for meeting with me. Us.” Lovett says, pulling away from Dan and stepping forward so he can shake POTUS’ hand.

POTUS grins. “Of course. I guess I better hire you, huh?”

Lovett frowns, tripping over his words and his feet.

POTUS laughs and looks pointedly at Dan.

Dan takes a step backwards. “I’ll be in my office,” he promises, smiling like he means it, like, maybe, he’ll always mean it, now. “Come find me when you’re done?”

POTUS doesn’t watch him leave as he motions Lovett into the chair in front of his desk. “Come, sit. It seems we have much to talk about.”

***

**Epilogue**

_November 2022_

Lovett has three speeches written. They’re on his hard drive, labeled ‘Democracy’s savior,’ ‘Good Riddance to California,’ and ‘Fuck if I know.’ 

“If you would just put them on the campaign drive,” Tommy argues for, at Lovett’s count, the fiftieth time in the last three hours. He adjusts Logan on his shoulders, his fingers tightening around the ridiculous toddler Toms he’s been wearing all campaign season. “That way I’d know if we have all our bases covered.”

“We do,” Lovett argues back for the fifty-first time. He looks past Tommy’s shoulder to pull a face at Logan, puffing his cheeks in imitation of the blowfish they’d seen at the aquarium a few weekends ago. Logan laughs and claps in Tommy’s ears, just like he deserves. “You know how I know?” Lovett asks, turning back to Tommy.

“Because you know what you’re doing?” Tommy guesses.

Lovett nods. “Because I know what I’m doing.”

Tommy sighs and glances around the Favreau for Senate office in WeHo. The desks have been pushed to the walls to make room for long tables of refreshments and rows of folding chairs for friends and family to wait out what is already shaping up to be a long, long night. He looks back at Lovett. “I don’t know what I should be doing.”

“I don’t either,” Lovett agrees, looking back at his laptop. The words are starting to swim in front of his eyes and he’s starting to wish for a bed, regardless of which speech he has to use to get there. “But preferably it’s not here.”

Tommy opens his mouth to answer, but his quip is interrupted by Jon’s office door flying open, the handle banging back against the wall with a crunch. Tommy flinches and mutters, “that’s going to cost us,” under his breath.

Logan laughs into the silence and Lovett has to stifle a chuckle of his own.

Jon’s eyes are wide, his cheeks flushed and the top button of his shirt undone. It’s wrinkled a little where it’s tucked into his pants. “If I don’t see an exit poll in the next five minutes-” He calls to the room at large.

Emily appears behind him, her own cheeks a little flushed as she rolls her eyes. “You’ll, what? Curmudgeon your staff with your withering glare.”

He turns to her, his eyes narrowing. She giggles, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” she agrees, her eyes sparkling. She uncovers her mouth to push his shoulder towards the tables. “Go, eat something. Preferably something fried.”

Jon doesn’t stop glaring at her until he reaches the tray of Dominos cheesy bread and focuses, instead, on choosing the cheesiest piece. The room releases a deep breath and the commotion of election night starts up again.

“Well,” Emily sighs as she joins them at Lovett’s desk. “That was a bust.”

“He does seem more stressed than when you started,” Lovett muses. “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

Em glares at him. “We have the kid to prove it. Speaking of-”

“She’s with Mark,” Tommy supplies. “I think he was putting her down for a nap.”

Em nods, her shoulders relaxing as she settles her hips on the edge of Lovett’s desk. “I hear you’re holding the speeches hostage.”

Tommy groans and throws up his hands. Logan tilts precariously on his shoulders, giggling as he catches himself in Tommy’s hair. Tommy grimaces and takes a step back. “If you have more luck than I did, please, let me know.”

Em laughs. “Am I going to have more luck-?”

“Oh,” Lovett interrupts, frowning up at her, “so you fancy yourself a speechwriter now, too? As if this campaign needs any more damn speechwriters. We have speechwriters coming out of our ears. You know what we really need? Someone who understands whatever the fuck WeChat is because, I’ve gotta tell you, China is doing a really great job of hacking our exit polls and it would go a long way to arresting this receding hairline I have going if I could just-”

She holds up her palm, pressing the other to her chest as she laughs. “Okay, okay, I get it.”

“It really is bad,” he tells her, pushing back his curls to demonstrate.

She laughs again, running her fingers through his hair. “I know. I think one of the interns has been documenting it.”

“Like Napoleon’s invasion of Russia,” Lovett sighs. “I should give that one to Elijah.”

“He’d love it.”

“He would.” Lovett sighs, shutting his laptop and leaning forward to tap his fingers against his desk, just inches from her thigh. “So, have you decided if you want him to win yet?”

“Yes. No. Maybe?” She frowns, reaching to twist their fingers together. “I’d be much more enthused about it if you’d agree to stay on.”

Lovett smiles up at her, her blond hair twisted into a practical, professional bun and her sheath dress free of toddler stains, her heels high and her legs strong enough to kick his ass at the Muay Thai classes they’ve been taking post-birth. He squeezes her fingers. “Nah, you’ll do just fine without me.”

“Sure,” she says, her face twisting skeptically. “But just think of all the fun we had last time.”

“Beer funnels with toddlers?” Lovett asks, his lips twitching as he tries not to laugh. “It has potential.”

“If you need a new venture,” Em offers.

Lovett snorts, catching sight of Dan over her shoulder. His sleeves are rolled past his elbows and his hairline isn’t doing any better, really, than Lovett’s is. He looks tired and Lovett can’t blame him. He’s been as patient as POTUS has been with Lovett’s part-time work as he’s spent the last fifteen months flying across the country a few days every week. But Lovett knows that they all – POTUS, Dan, Lovett himself – are ready for Lovett to pull his full weight.

Lovett misses him. Lovett misses Pundit. Lovett misses slow Sunday mornings, lounging with almond croissants in bed rather than dragging his ass into the office for pre-dawn speech writing. 

But now the construction on the townhouse is nearly finished, and Lovett’s been dreaming about cold winter walks with Dan’s hand in his, two layers of gloves between them. He’s been aching for the real, gritty, rewarding community work he’ll be able to do at the Center. And just last week, he’d fallen apart while helping Ella with her math worksheet, wanting, wanting so much. Dan had blamed it on the exhaustion and the stress and, while the tears might have been, Lovett hadn’t wanted it any less in the cold light of day.

They haven’t talked about it, not in so many words, but he’ll never get the chance to if he doesn’t make the decision, now.

“No new ventures,” Lovett shakes his head, squeezing Em’s hand again. “Not until I finish some old ones.”

She follows his line of sight and her smile gentles. “Yeah, I understand that.”

Across the room, Dan’s eyes widen as he stares at his phone, then hands it to Tommy. Dan looks around, catching Lovett’s eyes, his mouth twitching into a brilliant smile and giving away the gig moments before Tommy whoops, loudly, and calls out, “anything you’d like to say to your staff, Senator Favreau?”

Jon’s mouth falls open around a third piece of cheese bread. “If you’re fucking with me, Tommy-”

Tommy laughs. “Someone get this man a poll that he’ll believe.”

Jon lunges forward, grabbing Dan’s phone from Tommy’s hands. Em slides off the desk to join them, her face splitting into the brightest grin. She must have made her decision, then. 

Lovett smiles to himself as he pulls up the speech marked ‘Democracy’s savior’ and sends it to the printer.

He’s just closing his laptop and pushing back from his desk as Dan rounds the crowd of unruly staff to reach him. Lovett grabs for his hand, pulling him close. “How long have known?”

Dan shrugs, his cheeks flushed. “The exit polls have looked good since lunch.”

“What a time to develop a poker face,” Lovett accuses.

Dan shrugs, sheepishly.

“Fuck.” Lovett grins, his cheeks aching with it. “I’d forgotten what this feeling is like.”

“Hey.” Dan pushes a curl behind Lovett’s ear. “I’d understand, you know, if you aren’t ready to give all this up.”

Lovett shakes his head and squeezes Dan’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments much appreciated! And, please, come find me on [tumblr](http://stainyourhands.tumblr.com/)


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